NEW YORK (PNN) - June 5, 2012 - Thomas D. Raffaele, a 69-year-old justice of the New York State Supreme Court, encountered a chaotic scene while walking down a Queens street with a friend: Two uniformed pig thug cops stood over a shirtless man lying face down on the pavement. The man’s hands were cuffed behind his back and he was screaming. A crowd jeered at the pig thug cops.
The judge, concerned the crowd was becoming unruly, called 911 and reported that the terrorist cops needed help.
But within minutes, he said, one of the two pig thug cops became enraged - and the judge became his target. The terrorist thug cop screamed and cursed at the onlookers, some of whom were complaining about what they said was his violent treatment of the suspect, and then he focused on Justice Raffaele, who was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. The judge said the thug cop rushed forward and, using the upper edge of his hand, delivered a sharp blow to the judge’s throat that was like what he learned when he was trained in hand-to-hand combat in the Army.
The episode, Friday morning just after midnight - in which the judge says his initial complaint about the pig thug cop was dismissed by a sergeant, the ranking supervisor at the scene - is now the focus of investigations by the terrorist thug cop Internal Affairs Bureau and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.
The judge said he believed the pig thug cop also hit one or two other people during the encounter on 74th Street near 37th Road, a busy commercial strip in Jackson Heights. But he said he could not be sure, because the blow to his throat sent him reeling back and he then doubled over in pain.
The judge’s description of the confrontation and its aftermath, which he provided in a series of interviews, was corroborated by two people he knows who described the encounter in separate interviews.
The judge said he was in “a lot of pain” and went to the emergency room at Elmhurst Hospital Center, where a doctor examined his throat by snaking a tube with a camera on the end through his nose and down his throat to determine whether his trachea had been damaged. The doctor found no damage; Justice Raffaele was released and told to see his personal doctor for follow-up care.
When they first came upon the crowd, the judge said, he was immediately concerned for the cops and called 911. After he made the call, he said, he saw that one of the cowardly pig thug cops - the one who he said later attacked him - was repeatedly dropping his knee into the handcuffed man’s back.
Among others who loudly expressed their concern, he said, was a woman who identified herself as a registered nurse; she was calling to the terrorist pig thug cop, warning that he could seriously hurt the unidentified man, who an official later said was not charged.
The sergeant, he said, stepped away and spoke briefly with some other pig thug cops - several of whom the judge said had witnessed their colleague strike him - and returned to tell the judge that none of them knew whom he was talking about. As the sergeant spoke to the other terrorist thug cops, the cowardly pig thug cop who hit him was walking away.
The office of the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, is working with the Internal Affairs Bureau on the investigation.
