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NYC Cops Charged With Teen
Abandonment
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
NEW YORK — Two police officers
pleaded not guilty Tuesday to handcuffing a 14-year-old boy, kicking
and hitting him, and abandoning him in his boxer shorts on isolated
road as payback for a Halloween prank.
Officers Thomas Elliassen, 28, and
Richard Danese, 29, were indicted on 33 counts Monday, some of them
felonies. They were released without bail.
The officers were arrested last
fall on charges of unlawful imprisonment and endangering the welfare
of Rayshawn Moreno.
Prosecutors say the officers were
trying to teach the boy a lesson after he supposedly threw eggs at a
car near their Staten Island precinct. But Moreno's attorney said
the boy was throwing eggs at a friend.
The officers handcuffed Moreno and
drove him to a remote area, then kicked and hit him while he lay
facedown on a road, stripped to his boxer shorts, the indictment
said. The officers then left the boy to find his way back, it said.
The officer's lawyers said after
Tuesday's arraignment that the officers were being politically
prosecuted.
"The district attorney ramrodded
this case through the grand jury so it can come out and he can say
that he indicted two police officers," Danese attorney John Tynan
said.
Elliassen attorney John Patten
called the indictment "highly political."
"You can't play politics with
people's lives," he said.
The men were charged with unlawful
imprisonment _ punishable by up to four years in prison _
endangering the welfare of a child, harassment, attempted assault,
and several felony and misdemeanor counts of falsifying records.
Copyright 2008 The Associated
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broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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