NYPD threatened with $5M suit for using Taser on 86-year-old man

The New York Police Department is being threatened with a lawsuit after officers deployed their Tasers on an elderly Brooklyn man instead of a supposedly suicidal 23-year-old.

An attorney for John Antoine, 86, told the New York Daily News on Monday that he plans to sue the NYPD for $5 million as the result of the October incident that landed his client in two separate hospitals.

Mr. Antoine said he was cooking soup in the kitchen of his Brooklyn apartment when he was interrupted by police responding to a call concerning the boyfriend of the man’s granddaughter. The woman reportedly told the family’s health insurance provider earlier in the day that her boyfriend had become suicidal due to a lapse in medication, which in turn prompted the insurer to file a report with the NYPD’s 63rd Precinct.

A 911 dispatcher sent police to the house to investigate, but miscommunication caused responding officers to arrive at the residence with hardly any information.

“The police came in and say, ’You so and so, put down the knife,’ and I said, ’Why are you coming in my apartment? What do you want?’” Mr. Antoine told the Daily News. “They wouldn’t tell me.”

Mr. Antoine turned to put down the knife, but was struck by two separate Taser blasts in the process, including one to the back of his neck.

“I felt like I was dead,” he told the newspaper.

Mr. Antoine was later charged with harassment for failing to immediately drop the knife.

Mr. Antoine’s lawyer, Scott Rynecki, told the Daily News his client is lucky to be alive and said the NYPD should compensate for the officers’ excessive use of  force and the false charge of harassment.

“It is scary to think that our police force has such a lack of communication amongst each other,” Mr. Rynecki said.

After reviewing the 911 calls, the Daily News agreed that a review of the dispatcher tapes “clearly shows the botched confrontation was the result of lapses in information provided to patrol cops.”

“What makes this more outrageous is that members of the police department were given information that the situation they were called to involved a 23-year-old male,” Mr. Rynecki added. “And they were in possession of that individual’s name.”

A NYPD spokesman told the Daily News the officers who used their Tasers acted appropriately.

“The individual he encountered inside the residence was armed with a large kitchen knife and was in immediate proximity to both the sergeant and a 3-year-old who was present in the residence,” the spokesman said. “The individual refused to comply with the sergeant’s commands to drop the knife, instead making statements to the effect, ’I am not going to jail, I’m not going to the hospital.’”