A Riverhead woman filed a $ 10 million civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the city of Riverhead, the Riverhead Police Department and two police officers, alleging the officers used excessive force in an incident in June 2019, including broken bones and others Causing injuries.
In a complaint filed with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Borough of New York last month, Mayra Moralles-Osorio said her son Guillermo Vargas was arguing with a group of men from Moonlight Taxi when police arrived at the scene. The two Riverhead police officers “immediately began using force” to arrest her son and, according to the complaint, “she tried to warn the arresting officers that her son had a mental illness and that the violence used was not necessary” . . “
According to the complaint, the officers grabbed her arm and threw her to the ground, resulting in “fractures of the sacrum, left hand and knee, and abdominal pain.” Moralles-Osorio says she was “unarmed and posed no physical or other threat” to the officers.
The incident report filed by PO Andrew Groneman, one of the two officers involved, said that when he answered a call on Railroad Avenue about a dispute over a bicycle on June 24, 2019, he saw Vargas open the windshield of the Moonlight taxi broke up office. With the help of a second officer, PO James Treadwell, Vargas, who was fighting with the officers, was arrested and handcuffed, according to the report. “Because of the broken glass, his right arm received (medical) attention,” the report said. Groneman “received minor cuts and abrasions on his knees and elbows” while Vargas was handcuffed, the official said.
Mayra Moralles-Osorio is listed as a complainant in the report. The report says that Moralles-Osorio should “refund the window and pay for the bike”. No charges were brought, according to the report. Vargas was transported to Peconic Bay Medical Center “for further medical care,” the report said.
Moralles-Osorio’s injuries are not mentioned in the report.
Moralles-Osorio’s attorneys filed a lawsuit with the state Supreme Court last year but were denied permission to file a late complaint after missing the legal deadline to file the lawsuit.
In a June 1 ruling on Moralles-Osorio’s petition, State Supreme Court Justice Carmen Victoria St. George found that Moralles-Osorio had no complaint under the affidavit of Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller Ministry has filed and, as a result, there was no investigation into the incident.
According to court documents filed by the plaintiff with the state court, Moralles-Osorio, then 33, sought medical treatment at Peconic Bay Medical Center within an hour of the incident on Railroad Avenue. She was treated and discharged for lower back strain and a bruise in her left hand. According to the discharge document, she was advised to see an orthopedic surgeon.
The lawsuit alleges that the incident was “not an isolated incident. “The accused were made aware of the use of excessive and unnecessary violence by their police officers and / or systematic racism by their police officers, staff or other agencies, but still showed deliberate indifference to such unlawful acts,” the complaint said. Despite this knowledge, the city and police failed to take remedial action, the ad said.
The complaint also alleges that the city and police have not adequately trained and monitored their staff, including their police officers and the two officers in question.
Moralles-Osorio is seeking $ 1 million in damages in each of nine different causes, plus $ 1 million in punitive damages.
City Prosecutor Robert Kozakiewicz represented the city in the state court lawsuit. McGiff Halvorsen and Dooley of Patchogue law firm is representing the defendants in the federal lawsuit.
The plaintiff’s lawyers are Ferro, Cuba, Mangano Sklyar PC of Hauppauge.
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