New Jersey police accused of beating suicidal man so badly he needed surgery

Police officers in New Jersey beat a suicidal man in his hospital bed so badly that he required surgery, federal prosecutors have alleged.

Federal agents arrested officer Roger Then for allegedly participating in the assault and filming it on his cell phone, the New Jersey US Attorney's Office announced on Wednesday. The 29-year-old was charged with conspiring to violate an individual’s civil rights and concealing a civil rights violation, and faces more than 10 years in prison.

Mr Then and a fellow officer responded to a call from a man threatening to kill himself on 5 March, according to a federal complaint. The fire department transported the man to the hospital, where Mr Then and his fellow officer met him in the emergency room waiting area.

It was there that things allegedly turned violent. According to the complaint, hospital surveillance video showed the patient tossing an unidentified object down the hallway. Mr Then’s fellow officer responded angrily, the complaint alleges, pushing the man’s wheelchair and punching him in the face hard enough that he fell towards the ground.

As the patient fell, the complaint claims, Mr Then grabbed him by the back of the neck and shoved him further towards the ground.

A second video – this one allegedly taken by Mr Then himself – showed the officers standing in the patient’s hospital room. Lying on his back in the hospital bed, the patient called the other officer a “b****”.

“I’m a what?” the officer allegedly responded, to which the patient replied: “Do it."

The officer then put on a pair of hospital gloves and struck the victim twice across the face, according to the complaint. “I ain’t f***ing playing with you,” he said, as the patient covered his face with his hands. At one point, Mr Then turned his face towards the camera and grinned.

The patient sustained multiple injuries from the attack, according to the complaint, including an eye injury that required surgery.

Mr Then and his fellow officer made no mention of the alleged assault in their police report on the incident, the complaint alleges. The report said only that the victim was “restrained by these officers and security staff” after he became “combative” and threw medical glove boxes at the staff.

The report also noted that the officers were advised by medical staff of the victim's history of psychiatric issues.

The Paterson Police Department did not respond to The Independent’s request for comment. Police director Jerry Speziale told the Paterson Times that the incident was “not indicative” of the department as a whole, and that the police had initiated the investigation with the FBI in order to “clean house.”

“The Paterson police department will never accept this kind of behaviour, but I want to make it clear that these allegations are not an indication of the other 418 men and women in the Paterson police department who act under the color of the law every day,” he told the Paterson Press.

Mr Speziale said Mr Then had been placed on unpaid suspension. The other officer was no longer on active duty, according to the complaint.

Mr Then is the fourth Paterson police to be arrested in two months, as part of an ongoing federal probe of the department. He was arraigned in New Jersey on Wednesday and released on bail, without entering a plea.