WATCH THE NYPD’S SPOKESMAN ASSAULT, ARREST A PEACEFUL PROTESTER—FOR FILMING HIM ASSAULT ANOTHER PROTESTER
NEW YORK CITY IS PAYING $400,000 TO SETTLE A LAWSUIT AGAINST THE NYPD'S DEPUTY COMMISSIONER FOR PUBLIC INFORMATION, TARIK SHEPPARD.
The NYPD’s chief spokesman, Deputy Commissioner for Public Information Tarik Sheppard. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
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The NYPD's chief spokesperson ordered the wrongful arrest of a peaceful Black Lives Matter protester in 2020 because he filmed the police officer, then a captain, assault another peaceful protester, a woman.
Ernesto Lopez, a nurse from Washington state volunteering to help New York City respond to the Wuhan virus pandemic, just settled his federal civil rights lawsuit against the City and the NYPD spokesperson, Tarik Sheppard, on Friday.
Lopez was assaulted by other NYPD officers and handcuffed with zip-ties so tightly he temporarily lost feeling in his hands, his lawsuit alleged.
“My daughters wished me well and asked that I be safe as I embarked on my COVID-19 assignment in Manhattan in May 2020," Lopez said in a news release by the law firm representing him, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel.
"They had no idea that the NYPD, not COVID, was going to harm me," Lopez added. "I hope this case sparks change in the way the NYPD treats innocent, law-abiding citizens protesting peacefully.”
The then-42-year-old respiratory therapist came to New York during the initial onslaught of the pandemic in 2020. He lived out of a Brooklyn hotel.
Then four Minneapolis Police Officers murdered George Floyd. Derek Chauvin choked Floyd to death by kneeling on his neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, and three other officers failed to stop him, according to bystander video and court records.
In the days and nights that followed Floyd’s murder, protests broke out in at least 140 other American cities. The National Guard was activated in 21 states. It was the worst civil unrest the Nation experienced in 50 years—since the massive civil rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s.
Protesters in New York responded to Floyd's murder by taking to the streets by the thousands beginning May 28. On June 3, Lopez joined a peaceful protest near his temporary home in downtown Brooklyn, according to court records.
Shortly after 9:00 pm, NYPD officers surrounded the group of demonstrators Lopez was with in Cadman Plaza.
"Unprovoked, and without warning, the officers violently assaulted and indiscriminately arrested protesters," Lopez's legal complaint alleged.
Lopez was holding a protest sign in one hand and his mobile "smartphone" in his other—which he was using to record video.
In front of him, then-Captain Sheppard shoved a woman rolling her bicycle on the sidewalk to the ground then grabed another woman rolling another bicycle and maneovered her in a manner suggesting he is going to throw her to the ground too.
“Hey! Hey!,” Lopez protested, the video he captured shows.
Leaving the second woman, Capt. Sheppard turns toward Lopez, points him out to other cops and says “Arrest!”
Those cops "brutally attacked Mr. Lopez from behind, striking his head with a baton and tackling him to the ground," according to Lopez's complaint.
The City is paying $400,000 to settle the suit without a public trial. Lopez gets $125,000 while his attorneys get $275,000, under the settlement.
The day after Capt. Sheppard allegedly ordered the unlawful police assault on Lopez, Sheppard tackled a Black Lives Matter protester in Williamsburg, pinned her to the ground and tased her, according to a confirmed CCRB investigation report.
“You’re really not going to be able to breathe if you keep up this performance,” Capt. Sheppard told Brooklyn resident Destiny Strudwick when she said she couldn't breathe.
While the CCRB recommended disciplining Capt. Sheppard for assaulting Strudwick, NYPD brass intervened to short-circuit formal disciplinary charges in 2021.
But, a year later, the City settled Strudwick's federal civil rights lawsuit against Capt. Sheppard in 2022 for an undisclosed amount, court records show.
In 2023, Sheppard was promoted by NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban to Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, an Aug. 7 NYPD news release announced.
"I have often sought Deputy Commissioner Sheppard’s perspective on matters of importance before this new role—and I now look forward to having him on my executive team,” Commissioner Caban said.
Lopez's lawyer, Ilann M. Maazel, had a different view: "The NYPD should demote him, not promote him.”
The Mayor’s office did not reply to a request for comment. The NYPD referred a request for comment to the City’s Law Department.
“The settlement was in the best interest of all parties,” Nicholas Paolucci, spokesman for the law department, said in an email.
“I also note that the settlement is not an admission of wrongdoing by the NYPD or any officer,” he added.
New York City paid the largest civil rights settlement in American history in 2023 to a group of 1,380 Black Lives Matter protesters wrongfully arrested in 2020: $13.7 million plus $5.9 million in attorneys’ fees. To date, the City has paid more than $41 million—and counting—to settle lawsuits by people arrested protesting against Floyd's murder by police in 2020.
Deputy Commissioner Sheppard was one of the NYPD officers who rode on top of a police tank to raid Hamilton Hall and evict pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded inside on May 1.
Afterward, he was responsible for defending the use of SWAT teams when one of the specially trained, tactical officers fired a shot from his handgun, allegedly by accident, inside the building.
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