Queens dad claims cops beat him unconscious at July 4 barbecue

Leon Jones claims he was wrongfully arrested and beaten by a group of Queens police officers last year on July 4. Photo via Jones

By Jacob Kaye

For the past year, Leon Jones has passed a group of police officers stationed near his home on Rockaway Boulevard in Queens nearly every time he’s gone outside.

He’s never sure if they recognize him – but he recognizes them.

“They act like they don’t even know who I am because I'm not wounded no more, my face is not knotted up, I don't have the bloody clothes on,” Jones recently told the Eagle. “But if I had the same bloody clothes on, the same scars, they would know exactly who I was because that was their damage.”

A new lawsuit claims that officers from Southeast Queens’ 113th Precinct were in the process of arresting Jones’ daughter a year ago this week when they slammed the 46-year-old Queens man to the ground, knocked him unconscious, and beat him so badly that a judge immediately demanded he be taken from the courthouse to a hospital.

“Somebody has to be held accountable for this,” he said.

Jones and his attorneys at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP claim in the recently filed federal lawsuit that the officers used excessive force when they wrongfully arrested Jones during a Fourth of July barbecue at his apartment complex last year. The cops later denied him medical treatment while detaining him without a reason, the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit calls for the NYPD and the city to compensate Jones for his physical injuries and the emotional damage caused by the violent arrest. But Jones and his attorneys said they also just want the officers behind the alleged beating to answer for the incident.

“The main goal of this lawsuit is to shine a light on the officers who violated Mr. Jones' rights,” said Laura Kokotailo, Jones’ lawyer. “This case is about calling out that this is unacceptable…and that the officers involved must be held responsible.”

The city’s Law Department did not respond to a request for comment.

‘It was just nasty’

Jones said there was nothing unusual about the barbecue being held in the courtyard of the apartment complex he lives in on Rockaway Boulevard on Independence Day last year.

The celebration extended into the evening and a little after midnight, Jones’ 19-year-old daughter got into a fight.

A large number of cops gathered outside and began to arrest the teen – a neighbor overheard officers refer to the barbecue as a “riot situation,” the lawsuit alleged.

Jones made his way outside after getting word that his daughter was being arrested, and was shocked by the number of cops who had responded to the scene.

According to the lawsuit, Jones jogged toward the officers with his hands in the air and began asking questions about the arrest when he was tackled to the ground by a dozen officers.

They pushed Jones’ face into the pavement, handcuffed him, and began to hit him in the back of the head, Jones claims.

The cops allegedly encouraged one another to hit Jones and use their tasers. Jones said that, at one point, he heard someone refer to him as a “f–cking animal.”

Not long after the beating began, Jones lost consciousness.

“It was just nasty,” Jones said. “I was looking for my kid. I posed no threat. I didn't have a weapon. I just was going to ask a question about my child. That's it. That's literally all I was doing.”

Jones came to in the back of a police cruiser. The officers were taking him to the 113th Precinct and had not called for medics, according to the lawsuit.

The officers eventually called for an ambulance after arriving at the precinct, and only at the insistence of Jones' wife, the lawsuit alleges. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital but was quickly brought back to the 113th.

For the next 22 hours, Jones was allegedly held in central booking.

“It was the police who escalated this encounter,” Kokotailo said. “There was no justification for the police to do what they did.”

While Jones’ detainment was lengthy, his time before a judge was not.

“Absolutely not,” the Queens Criminal Court judge allegedly said after seeing Jones’ open head wound and bloody T-shirt.

The judge immediately ordered Jones to be released from custody and granted him an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.

Swept under the rug

A year after the arrest, Jones said he largely hasn’t been able to shake it.

Many of the officers involved in the incident remain in the 113th Precinct, which he lives close to. At first, he said he felt angry whenever he spotted them. But recently, he’s felt nervous, he said.

Jones said he’s mostly baffled that life has gone on as usual after the arrest that left him wounded.

“The police just beat my ass, they beat my daughter up, and then they just say, ‘All right, go home now,’” he said. “Nobody gets held accountable for this. Nothing happens. Just sweep it under the rug.”