NYPD cops on modified duty for wild caught-on-video Brooklyn liquor store clash with suspect 40%
By Emma Seiwell55% John Annese0% Rocco Parascandola58% Michael Sheridan0% Thomas Tracy44%
4/15/2026, 4:36:40 PM
Topics: Nyc Crime, Police Misconduct
BS Summary: This article contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Unattributed Quote, Appeal to Emotion, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 27.6% saturation with 473 hits. Analysis detected 3,346 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,711 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 44.5% and a BS Rank of 40% (10,246 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 60.90% of the article peer group.
A pair of NYPD cops were stripped of their guns and badges Wednesday after repeatedly punching a man they mistook for a drug dealer who refused to be handcuffed inside a Brooklyn liquor store in a wild caught-on-camera clash that Mayor Mamdani is calling “unacceptable.”
The Tuesday afternoon takedown, in which the cops are recorded crashing into a display of wine bottles at BK Wine Depot in Boerum Hill while punching the man in the face and body as he resisted arrest, is under review by the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.
“The violence used by NYPD officers in this video is extremely disturbing and unacceptable,” Mayor Mamdani said on social media.
“Officers should never treat a person this way.
The NYPD is conducting a full investigation.”
The pair of Brooklyn North narcotics detectives involved in the clash thought the man matched the description of someone who had just made a drug sale, a police source said.
He was wearing similar clothes as the suspect — a white T-shirt, shorts and light green shorts — but had no drugs on him when he was arrested in the store on Hoyt St. near Baltic St., the source said.
Cops later determined the man they arrested had nothing to do with the drug sale, an NYPD spokesman said.
“It is upsetting to view,” Tisch said of the video.
“We’ll have more to say about it as that investigation unfolds.”
The officers were stripped of their guns and shields and are being put on desk duty for the duration of the investigation, Tisch said.
The roughly arrested suspect was given a desk appearance ticket by cops for resisting arrest and obstruction of government administration, officials said.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney quickly announced they would be declining to prosecute those charges.
Police sources said the suspect has a criminal history but hasn’t been arrested in 13 years.
A friend of the arrestee said he needed several stitches to close a deep cut to his leg from the shattered wine bottles.
“I spoke to him and he’s really shook up,” said the friend, who wished not to be named.
“He can barely speak because his nose was broken in the process.”
“The detectives that did this, they’re known out here,” she added.
“It’s just this is the first time that someone was smart enough to film from start to finish.”
When cops confronted the suspect, he refused to be taken into custody, sparking the clash, officials said.
“The way they approached the guy to arrest him, I think it wasn’t the right way,” a worker at BK Wine Depot who wished not to be named, told the Daily News.
The man cops arrested is a regular customer, the worker said.
“I just think it was a lot of unnecessary force,” the worker said.
“They were hitting him really hard.”
While the plain-clothes cops wore NYPD vests, they never identified themselves as officers nor did they say why they had stopped him, Abelee Moran, a witness who recorded the clash told the Daily News.
“The guy (said), ‘Wait, what’s going on?'”
Moran said, recalling the moment when cops came into the store and grabbed the suspect.
“They just started attacking him.
We started yelling at the officers.”
“We saw you make the sale!”
one cop screamed at the suspect, Moran recalled.
“He wasn’t fighting back,” she said of the suspect.
“He was just trying to block the hits.”
The arresting officers had their badges out.
As he kneeled over the handcuffed suspect, one of the cops identified himself in the video as Det.
Michael Algerio, a 13-year veteran of the NYPD.
When another witness asked the other detective, who was on the phone calling for assistance, what his name was, he quickly screamed, “My name is shut up!
I’m trying to make a call right now because this guy is bleeding out!”
Scott Munro, the head of the NYPD’s Detectives Endowment Association asked that no one rush to judgement based on the video alone.
“Narcotics detectives arrest you and tell you to put your hands behind your back and you don’t comply, what do you think happens?”
Munro said.
Both Munro and Police Benevolent Association president Pat Hendry are angry at Mamdani for condemning the officers.
“NYPD detectives put their lives on the line daily, doing the dangerous work politicians would never have the courage to do,” Munro said.
Hendry said Mamdani “has already rushed to condemn the NYPD members involved without knowing all the facts.”
The seven-minute video first posted online by Moran shows the two plainclothes cops struggling to get the man’s hands behind his back in the rear of the store near a set of glass-doored refrigerators.
The cops are recorded striking the man six times.
They then push his head into a refrigerator door before all three fall into a display of wine bottles, sending the bottles shattering to the floor, the video shows.
“I would say 10 to 15 bottles broke,” the worker said.
“I came in here to clean up the mess.
All the broken glass.”
One of the cops grabs the man by the foot and drags him over the broken bottles toward the store’s front door as the pair try to get him on his stomach so they can handcuff him.
“Roll over!
Stop resisting!”
one cop screams repeatedly in the video.
“Put your hands behind your back.”
The man cut his leg on the broken glass as he struggled against the officers and was bleeding heavily as cops continued to try to get his hands behind his back, the video shows.
“It was a mess.
Like a lot of blood,” the worker said.
“I saw him bleeding a lot.
He was already on the floor and they were beating him with their elbows.”
One cop is seen stomping the floor near the man’s head though it is not clear in the video if he made contact with the suspect.
The same officer then stands on the back of the suspect’s knee to immobilize him.
“Give me your hand!”
Algerio screams at the suspect.
“Stay there!
You’re covered in blood!”
“They kicked him once he was down on the ground,” the arrestee’s friend said.
“It was unnecessary.
It’s disgusting.
I mean really, you treat your dog better.
The way they slide them around (the floor).
He’s trying to tell him the glass is there, you’re telling him to roll over on his stomach.”
The man wouldn’t put his arm behind his back, prompting witnesses on the other side of the glass doors watching the arrest to urge him to comply.
“Hey big dog!
Give him your hands or you’re going to bleed out!”
one witness is heard yelling in a second cellphone video of the arrest.
The suspect claimed he was innocent and that he was a local security guard.
At times during the arrest, he’s screaming to Abelee and others recording, explaining that he had just gotten off work, has kids at home and was asking someone he knew to call his family.
“Call my mom!”
he pleaded.
“I got a security license in my pocket!”
he screamed to the officers at one point.
“I’m coming home from work.
I swear to God!”
Inside the liquor store, two women witnessing the clash yelled at the cops as the crowd became agitated.
“Why are you punching him?
… You punched him for no reason,” one screamed.
“You can’t resist arrest!”
one of the cops yelled back at her, threatening to arrest her.
“You want to interfere with this investigation?”
As the officers wait for an ambulance, one of the witnesses inside the store gets on the phone with someone, relaying what happened.
“Shut up!”
one officer screamed at the two women as he tries to call for medical help on his cell phone.
“You’re frustrated, which is why you want us to shut up,” one woman countered.
“Why don’t you shut up because you’re annoying!”
the officer yelled back, adding, “Why don’t you get a job?”
After several minutes the officers pick up the man and take him to an ambulance outside.
The two detectives didn’t have any body worn cameras on.
Nor did they have radios and were using their phone to call for an ambulance and backup.
An NYPD spokesman said that narcotics officers were conducting undercover buy and bust operations after receiving “numerous complaints from the community about drug sales in the area, and the department has made numerous arrests in the area for drug sales.”
Undercover officers had bought crack from a suspect named Joshua Ramos, who was quickly arrested, and cops were looking for an associate of Ramos’ who was wearing a white T-shirt and green shorts.
“Officers then observed a male who matched the description of Ramos’ associate directly across the street,” the NYPD spokesman said.
“They approached that male, identified themselves of NYPD, and then attempted to arrest the male inside a store.”
“This individual was not charged with any offense related to the sale of narcotics because it was later determined that he was not involved in the drug sale,” the spokesman added.
Ramos is charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance.
The arrestee’s friend confirmed that he works in security and lives in NYCHA’s Gowanus Houses across the street from the liquor store.
“Everyone knows that man,” she said.
“He is a very nice man.
Goes to work and minds his business.
He came home, showered, changed his clothes, and went to enjoy himself (before being arrested).”
“He had a day off the next day and this is what you do to him?”
she added.
On Wednesday afternoon, local residents and activists protested the rough arrest outside the liquor store.
“They have lost their guns already but that’s not enough.
They should be fired,” Hawk Newsome, co-founder of Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told the crowd.
“We are demanding Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez arrest these cops like they would arrest anyone else.”
“Imagine you’re beating someone mercilessly and you’re caught on camera and you don’t care,” he added.
“You have the bravado to keep going.”
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.