Last spring, a retired NYPD officer was acquitted of felony assault charges for allegedly punching a female police officer as he and his wife were picking up their 13-year-old son. The teen, Devin Almonor, was arrested after a stop-and-frisk, and his parents argued he was the victim of racial profiling. Now, the family has filed a lawsuit against the NYPD, and the teen has spoken out about the incident: "It was surreal. I thought cops were out here to protect us. But they racially profile. They are prejudiced. I don't know what to believe anymore."
Devin, now a freshman at All Hallows Catholic school in the Bronx, said he was on his way home when he was stopped by plainclothes cops on W. 141st Street. Police said he was part of a rowdy group of kids that prompted six 911 calls, and said he was arrested after he reached toward his waistband as if he had a gun—police later acknowledged he didn't have any weapons. Despite not being charged with any crime, Devin was handcuffed and held at the 30th precinct for six hours. Even worse, he alleges in the lawsuit that police officers teased him for crying, saying he was crying like a girl.
While he was sitting in a juvenile holding room, Devin's father Merault Almonor, who retired from the NYPD in 2003, ended up in a fist fight with officers, while his mother was also arrested. In their lawsuit, which names six individual cops, they argue that Devin's run-in with cops was just another example of racially motivated policing under the highly criticized stop-and-frisk program. Merault Almonor feels betrayed by the whole experience: "I can't believe my department did this to me. We are a family of cops...I used to look up to cops. After this, I lost respect for the department."
