OFFICERS ACQUITTED IN MINEO TRIAL

A Brooklyn jury found three police officers not guilty on Monday of
abusing a suspect in the Prospect Park subway station during a 2008
arrest, in a case that recalled some of the city's most notorious
police brutality episodes but never generated as much public outcry or
departmental change.

Acquitting all three men on all counts, the jurors rejected Michael
Mineo's claims that Officer Richard Kern had attacked him and
repeatedly rammed a baton between his buttocks, thereby making the
charges against the two other officers -- that they had helped cover
up the abuse -- irrelevant.

"I'll finally get a good night's sleep," Officer Kern said after the
verdict was read. "I'm glad the system works. It's been a long road
and it's finally over, thank God."

The verdict, by a jury of six men and six women, came after just one
full day of deliberations in a trial that lasted four weeks. One
juror, Stevan L. Miller, said in an interview that the prosecution's
case had "so many holes" that he and other jurors were shocked when
they finished. "The defense didn't have to do anything," Mr. Miller
said.

Mr. Mineo's lawyers promised to push forward with a
multimillion-dollar civil lawsuit against the city and to ask federal
prosecutors to consider charges that his civil rights had been violated.

"It's not over," Mr. Mineo said. "I kind of had a feeling it would
turn out this way. If you want to commit a murder, join the N.Y.P.D.
and you get cleaned off."

On Oct. 15, 2008, Officer Kern, assigned to a unit working from
Brooklyn's 71st Precinct, saw Mr. Mineo, a body-piercer, smoking
marijuana on Flatbush Avenue and then chased him into the subway
station. After a struggle, Mr. Mineo was handcuffed outside the
station manager's booth, then released with a summons despite a
computer check that should have shown that there was an outstanding
warrant for his arrest.

Officer Kern, 26, a married father of three, has been on the force
five years. The other officers on trial were Officer Kern's partner,
Andrew Morales, 28, the son and brother of New York detectives; and
Alex Cruz, 28, who looked toward the floor and cried as the verdict
was read.

"It was very hard sitting there and listening to all the lies,"
Officer Morales said afterward.

Officer Kern, whose confident, matter-of-fact testimony was a key part
of the defense case, showed no expression before the verdict was read,
then smiled, hugging his lawyer and his parents, who sobbed at news of
the outcome.

Afterward, he said he hoped to "get back on the street and do what I
love to do: protect the people of Brooklyn."

Mr. Miller, the juror, said prosecutors never answered critical
questions, like why there was no blood on the jeans Mr. Mineo was
wearing during the confrontation. The jury asked the judge to play
surveillance video from the day of the arrest in court. Though Mr.
Mineo and another witness had testified that he had blood on his hand,
jurors saw him place his hands in his pockets in the video and they
asked to examine the jeans on their own. They found no blood in the
pockets or the seat, Mr. Miller said. The jurors, Mr. Miller said,
were also troubled by a hole in Mr. Mineo's boxers: He said it was
caused by the baton, but expert witnesses presented by the defense
said that was impossible.

The prosecutors, Mr. Miller said, "were never able to answer how the
hole was made."

As soon as Mr. Mineo's allegations emerged in 2008, they drew
comparisons with the 1997 torture of Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant
who was sodomized with a broomstick by a police officer in Brooklyn's
70th Precinct station house. The Louima attack became a national
symbol of police brutality and racism, and the main officer involved
was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

But while Mr. Louima's injuries, including punctured internal organs
and missing teeth, strongly suggested an attack, Mr. Mineo's medical
condition was more murky: His lawyers said he had developed an
abscess, but they initially refused to release his medical records.

And while the attack on Mr. Louima by a white officer stirred
longstanding complaints about the treatment of black men by the
police, there was no racial component to Mr. Mineo's case, since both
he and the officers involved were white and Hispanic. It spawned
neither major civil rights protests nor sweeping change to training or
operations within the ranks. As the trial got under way in State
Supreme Court in Brooklyn last month, there were neither protests
outside the courthouse to support Mr. Mineo nor a sea of blue uniforms
inside to support the officers.

Throughout, the defense made diminishing Mr. Mineo's credibility a
priority, telling jurors about his drug use, previous arrests and the
federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the city, seeking about
$350 million in damages. (Mr. Louima won about $8 million in
settlements).

With conflicting expert testimony on the physical evidence and medical
records, jurors were left to sort through the recollections of
witnesses, including two of the officers on trial and Kevin Maloney, a
transit officer who happened to be at the Prospect Park station when
Mr. Mineo burst inside.

During two hours on the witness stand, Officer Maloney said he had
come forward to quiet false allegations that Officer Cruz had
sodomized Mr. Mineo. He said he saw Officer Kern press his baton into
Mr. Mineo's buttocks, but also that he did not think it amounted to
abuse.

Mr. Mineo's own testimony provided the trial's other highlight and its
most colorful moments. On the witness stand, his straightforward,
anguished account of abuse gave way to defiance as defense lawyers
asked him about his lifestyle, his gang affiliation and even whether
he paid taxes.

The jury's forewoman, Jamie Dove, said: "He was animated. I didn't
judge him based on that or his past. It was just the evidence."

During occasionally tense deliberations, one juror, a young woman,
told the group that Officer Kern had been convicted of police
brutality twice before, and was met with "shocked silence," Mr. Miller
said. She was replaced by an alternate juror on Friday. (Officer Kern
was cleared in two cases of excessive force by the Civilian Complaint
Review Board, but one of those cases, in 2007, led to two lawsuits the
city settled for $50,000.)

Mr. Mineo was not in court for the verdict, but joined his lawyer to
talk to reporters afterward in the hallway. As they spoke, the
officers and their families exited the courtroom. Everyone exchanged
glares, and then Mr. Mineo uttered a homophobic slur.

Prosecutors in the case left the courthouse without commenting. Later,
when asked about it at an unrelated news conference, Charles J. Hynes,
the Brooklyn district attorney, said, "I never look beyond the jury's
verdict, and I never speculate."