A New York City police officer was charged with assault after he was called to an apartment to help calm an emotionally disturbed child and repeatedly punched a man multiple times after being asked to wear a face mask inside the residence.
Officer Christian Zapata was just indicted with third-degree assault after he struck a 43-year-old man more than a dozen times in his face last year.
The most incriminating part of it all was that the entire encounter was caught on body camera footage.
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The incident took place on Dec. 7, 2022, when police were called to provide aid to an immunocompromised teenager in crisis at a Harlem apartment.
When the cops arrived at the apartment, the victim, whom the New York Daily News identified as Jerome Collins, asked them to put on face masks, but the officers refused. Department police at the time noted that officers were mandated to wear face masks when working indoors.
Zapata told Collins that he was interfering with their response and threatened to arrest him. At that point, another officer accompanying Zapata restrained and started to escort Collins out of the apartment and down the hallway. Collins swats the officer’s hand away but still complies with the escort. That’s when Zapata begins punching Collins about 13 times in just nine seconds.
WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.
Other officers at the scene had to pull Zapata off Collins to stop the beating.
Afterward, Zapata is seen on body camera video apologizing to Collins’ son.
“I’m sorry, young man, sorry you had to see that,” Zapata said.
Even though Zapata apologized to the boy, Collins told ABC 7 News that the beating impacts how he talks with his son about the police. “What can I tell my son that watched his father get beat? And I try to tell him, ‘Police are good.’ How can I tell him police are good if he seen his daddy get beat?”
Collins was initially arrested but then released. The…
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