A Hempstead man has filed a federal lawsuit against the Nassau County Police Department for wrongful arrest.
Tyrone Phifer, 63, was approached by police on Dec. 22, 2021 after leaving an appointment at a Baldwin foot doctor. According to a video shown at a press conference Thursday at civil rights lawyer Frederick Brewington’s office, Phifer was restrained, tackled, and handcuffed, and forced to sit on a bench. Items he was carrying – including Christmas cookies given to him by the office workers – were either seized or strewn throughout the sidewalk.
Phifer repeatedly insisted to the officers that they had the wrong individual, and he had been at the doctor’s office since earlier that morning.
The police claimed Phifer had matched the description of a suspect they were looking for. Brewington said that police had been searching for a man named Leroy, but the video showed the officers holding a prescription Phifer had been given, and correctly identified him within two minutes of the interaction – but Phifer remained detained for much longer.
“Patrick Ryder, the [police] commissioner, and Nassau County know that there is a path pattern and practice of arresting African Americans at a much higher rate than white individuals in Nassau County,” Brewington said before gesturing to a chart behind him. “One of these charts shows that with regard to being charged with obstruction of governmental administration, 18.3 African Americans to one white person. It is outrageous. And the numbers have not gone down. They are going up. So when we talk about Nassau County being the safest county in the nation, who is it safe for? It’s not safe for individuals that look like Mr. Phifer.”
As a result of the interaction, Phifer was charged with obstructing governmental administration, a misdemeanor charge that could have carried a year in prison – but he was acquitted. Phifer was represented by Diane Clarke of the Legal Aid Society. Brewington said prosecutors pressured Phifer to plead guilty, but he refused.
“I was abused and accused of something that I didn’t do,” Phifer told reporters. “I feared for my life. I didn’t reach in my pocket because it was up under my jacket. And when he approached me, he kept calling me Leroy, and he had his hand on his gun. I had the cigarette and the description in the bag with my men, with my medicine that the doctor gave me, plus the Christmas gifts that [the office] had gave me. It got out of control, and then they held me on the ground. They handcuffed me from that point, they said I was under arrest. I said, Take me to the precinct. They refused and took me to Nassau County Medical Center, where I was handcuffed to the gurney until 8:30 that night.”
Phifer, a grandfather of eight, described the event as “the worst day of my life,” and said he no longer goes to the doctor’s office by himself after this incident.
Civil rights activists joined Brewington and Phifer to express their support as well as frustration with what occurred.
“As a Black man, I do not feel safe,” William Bailey, the Long Island director of New York Communities for Change, said. “Every day I leave my house, there’s no guarantee I will return home, and that is not right. I would love to grow up one day to be Mr. Phifer’s age. We have to protect our grandparents, but we don’t know what’s going to happen with us when we leave the room in our homes. Racism continues to exist, and we cannot ignore the fact that it’s staring at us right in our face, but we choose to pretend that it’s not right there. It tries to hide. It tries to disguise itself, but us as Black people and Brown people, we know we feel it, we know what we’re going through, and we can no longer allow that to happen.”
The federal lawsuit filed by Brewington seeks $5 million in damages for Phifer.
The Nassau County Police Department told the Long Island Press that it had no comment on the matter.
