In a civilized and free society, the practice of misconduct, abuse of authority, discourtesy, use of profanity/offensive and abusive language by any law enforcement officer that deprives any person of rights, privileges or immunities secured and protected by state or federal law is considered to be a criminal act. This becomes more serious when this act is based on rational profiling, personal biases, race, ethnicity, faith and/or gender orientation. A discriminatory incident and hate remarks about my faith took place by FDNY and NYPD officials on 03/07/2011 at [protected]@21 St. S/B 9th Ave. The series of events are summarized as follow:
I was taking my passenger in my yellow cab whom I picked from Port Auth. Bus Terminal @ 7:41PM bound for Bleeker St./Thompson St. Around 7:45PM when I was in the middle lane at W21 St. I saw number of FDNY personnel along with fire trucks and SUV beside number of pedestrians waiting for crossing the road on both sides of the street. While traffic was moving normally, I was in the middle lane of road when I noticed a FDNY firefighter appeared from the crowd on left side waiving his hand in the dark. At that time there was no flashing lights of any FDNY vehicle in that area. Another FDNY personnel appeared behind the first one, punched my left side view mirror and broke it. It happened when I stopped on left side in front of entrance of building No.177 on my right side while Building No.174 was on my left side. After a while a fire truck came and blocked my vehicle on left side just before the North side zebra crossing of W20 St. My passenger and myself were trying to assess the situation when all of a sudden a bunch of FDNY personnel came down along with their chief from their truck and SUV (7BN) yelling, shouting and screaming, “same piece of Mus.. ###”…”suck it up”….dump this f…… a.. h… “give’em a blow”..etc. etc. were some of the remarks coming from them. The chief seem to be the most aggressive one ordering me to shut off the engine, take the keys out, come out and sit down on the floor. I tried to ask what….but he shouted “shut up and sit down on the floor which I did. After that he asked my passenger to come out and take another cab. I requested him not to go because he was the only witness of this incident but he left without even paying his fare. Following this the crowd was asked to disperse by the chief.
After a while NYPD car # 3080 from 10 Pct arrived and stopped behind my car. The chief and 2/3 other FDNY personnel approached them and gave them a briefing. The NYPD officers whose attitude was also aggressive demanded my license, car registration and insurance which I gave to them. They didn’t ask me the details of events or even hello which was against their logo “Courtesy-Professionalism-Respect”. During their screening process of my papers, a number of FDNY and NYPD vehicles came, stayed and left at the scene, few among them were NYPD cars # 4979, 4770, 4708 etc.etc. An NYPD tow truck also arrived at the scene which scared me badly giving an indication that my car is being towed and myself being arrested for unknown reasons. At this point I decided to get someone intervened in this scary situation and called 911 at 7:47pm and briefed the situation to the operator and requested to dispatch some senior officer to assess the fishy situation that what is going-on. She replied help is coming soon. I waited for some time, my nervous system was going down badly as I am a heart patient; it seemed like I am going to suffer a heart attack. I called 311 operator at 7:52pm and requested him to connect me to Internal Affairs Civilian Complaint Review Board-(CCRB). He asked me to remain on the line. First he connected 911 operator and briefed her log number and call reference details of the job and then 911 operator connected me to detective named St. Louis who asked me to brief the details. While I was explaining her the situation, I was interrupted by two POs who arrived at the scene on my 911 call. PO St. Louis advised me to call her back on her phone number [protected]) to brief a complete picture of the whole incident.
Both the officers asked me a number of questions about the incident like when FDNY personnel stopped me, were their vehicle flashing lights or not?; how you hit the injured person?; where is the victim now?; have you seen any ambulance at the scene? etc. I replied that I haven’t seen any vehicle with flashing lights, I didn’t hit any person, Only FDNY personnel punched my right side view mirror and broke it, nobody was injured in anyway, it’s all fabrication of events and the FDNY personnel including the chief badly misbehaved and verbally abused me accusing me and my faith. They went back to POs in car # 3080; there was some conversation among them and after a while they left.
In the meantime, Mr.Ramin from Tel.#[protected] called me and gave me FDNY Report # 11-10231 for my broken side mirror. After around 30 minutes, the POs of car # 3080(PO Powlett-shield # 31995) gave me Traffic Summonses # AAN4688692 for "Failure to Yield to Emergency Veh.Personnel" and an NYPD “10th Precinct Incident Information Slip-(Complaint Report # 505)” involving me in a motor vehicle accident which shocked me. I asked the POs can I ask question about this accident slip, he replied, “get the report copy and you will know everything” and they left.
I called detective St.Louis at her given phone number but she could not answer the phone and till to-date that phone number is not answering which itself is a very strange phenomena.
I would request the concerned investigation agencies to precisely look into the matter, find a footage of any CCTV camera if any available at that location (9th Ave between 21st-20th street) to get the real facts which took place there. What was going on there before all this happened? Why so many FDNY personnel and trucks were in the area? Were they responding to a call? Since how long were there and what was the job assigned to them at that time? What kind of collaboration FDNY and NYPD involved in this incident? What kind of conspiracy it was between both agencies that they needed an escape goat in which they fitted me? What caused the watch dog-CCRB that its detective St. Louis is not involving CCRB in this investigation despite her commitment? There was a big scene and no one knew what really happened except the FDNY & NYPD. Why NYPD became an accomplice in this incident; why I am made to bear the blame of others is to be investigated. It is important to investigate Why the Chief badly and ruthlessly misbehaved and ordered me to sit down on the road like a criminal? Does he possessed such an authority to disgrace a peaceful citizen of the United States in front of bunch of people on the road?
I would also reiterate that an accident case #[protected] was registered on 03/07/2011. Please investigate who was the injured person in this accident?; who were the EMS/paramedic personnel who attended this accident? where the injured FDNY personnel was taken by EMS and what was the treatment provided by whom and how long it prolonged and how much benefits were taken by this FDNY personnel from the city agencies? who else get benefitted with this report? Kindly investigate this fishy incident as well as all the involved characters in it to dig out the truth and the abuses on the bases of rational profiling against targeting a particular community of the American society which will help in eliminating the root causes of this hateful behavior in the civilization.
Please do not hesitate in contacting me if you need any further information/assistance in this regard.
Thank you for your cooperation and assistance, With my best regards,
HASHEM BHATI
2272 E 17TH St. Brooklyn NY [protected]
Tel.: [protected], Fax: [protected], e-mail: [protected]@hotmail.com
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.