In a highly embarrassing arrest for New York City’s high police command, a white Staten Island officer was still in custody Wednesday after being stung with hate crime charges by the United States Attorney.
The officer’s arrest and his detainment share a national spotlight with several other widely publicized stains on the force, including a suspension ordered for a deputy inspector, Anthony Bologna, who last week peppered-sprayed a motionless teacher’s aide during an Occupy Wall Street protest. That incident occured only days before another high ranking police official was filmed as he punched a youth for rolling his eyes.
Also sullying the city’s high command was the Labor Day incident in which Jumaane Williams (D-45), a dread-locked city councilman, was beaten by police along with another black city official at Brooklyn’s West Indian Day Parade.
The officer in custody, Michael Daragiati, 32, is charged with “willfully arresting and charging” a young black man and “willfully arresting and charging him with a crime without probable cause, on false pretenses and for doing so based on a racial animus.”
In other shocking charges in the same criminal complaint, the eight-year NYPD veteran was accused of “attempting to commit violent extortion.” He was also accused of “committing wire fraud by making false statements to an auto insurance company” in connection with his off-duty, snow removal business.
If convicted, Daragiati faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine. Conviction on the other charges would send him to prison for 20 years on each one and force him to pay $250,000 for each count as well.
According to the charges, FBI and NYPD Internal Affairs investigators “intercepted” telephone calls in which they said Daragiati boasted that he had “fried another nigger” while speaking to an unamed young woman.
Daragiati’s boast referred to his baseless arrest of the young, unidentified black man he had “stopped and frisked” without proable cause, on the night of April 15 in the island’s Stapleton section.
The officer “forcibly pushed (the man) against the side of a parked car and roughly frisked him,” according to court documents, which noted that the young man carried no drugs or weapons and was not disorderly or uncooperative.
Yet later, after he complained about his rough treatment and asked Daragiati for his badge number, the officer arrested and handcuffed him. Sometime later, at the 120th Precinct station house, Daragiati allegedly said, “I would have let him go, but I really didn’t like being disrespected.”
Daragiati added insult to injury when he filed a police report in Richmond County Criminal Court claiming that the young man “had flailed his arms (sic) and kicked at his legs.” That falsehood, in turn, propped up Daragiati’s false claim that the young man “resisted arrest.”
Deputy Police Commissioner Paul J. Browne, in a rapid, e-mailed response to BlackAmericaWeb.com’s request for comment, said officer “Garagiati was arrested and suspended yesterday in the wake of an NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau investigation that began in January, initially looking into allegations that Daragiati was associating with a drug dealer.”
As that investigation went forward, Browne continued, “it was expanded to investigate allegations of insurance fraud in connection with his off-duty snow plowing business. It wasn’t until they were several months into those initial investigations that IAB detectives heard Daragiati refer to the false arrest and widened ther probe.”
BlackAmericaWeb.com asked Browne whether Daragiati’s indictment, arrest and suspension marked the first such hate crime action against an NYPD officer in department history, but his e-mail contained no response …..
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