Retired NYPD officer Merault Almonor and his wife, Wilma Dore-Almonor, are currently on trial, facing felony assault charges for a 2010 fracas in a Harlem police station. You may recall that the incident started after the couple went to pick up their teenage son who was arrested, they claim, in a case of racial profiling. And when an emotional Dore-Almonor barged into the stationhouse cursing and yelling (while her husband looked for parking), the situation devolved quickly. Yesterday she told her side of the story.
According to the Daily News, Dore-Almonor testified that when she identified her son at the stationhouse "in a tumble of words," a cop "barked" back, "If you don't calm down, we'll have to ask you to leave. She claims another told her, "Get out or we'll have you arrested," and soon she found herself surrounded by "five or six cops."
Then the officer who had arrested her son, Brian Dennis, emerged, and she told him, "I know that you’re a racist because I’ve seen you in action." That didn't exactly defuse the situation, and she testified that Dennis told the other cops to arrest her. According to Dore-Almonor, a female officer punched her in the face, and they tackled her to the floor. “They kept kicking me,” Dore-Almonor testified, the Times reports, “stepping on my back and they were laughing."
Her husband arrived to find his wife under arrest, and prosecutors allege that her husband punched a female cop in the face, sending her to the floor. Prosecutors also claim Dore-Almonor set the stage for her arrest by storming into the stationhouse yelling, "Get those f - - -ing cuffs off my son!" Almonor is charged with felony assault, Dore-Almonor with resisting arrest and trespassing. Their son, who was arrested during a stop-and-frisk, had been collared because prosecutors say he "reached toward his waistband as the police approached," but it's unclear if he was ever formally charged with anything. The family is suing the city.
