K-9 DRAGS MAN BY NECK AFTER HE WAS KICKED AND BEATEN BY COPS

Cops apparently got pissed off after he mouthed-off at them

The man was thrown out of a casino for being under age and then had a confrontation with cops. They charged him with aggravated assault on a police officer and a police dog, disorderly conduct, and resisting. However, a video recording did not show him resisting arrest. Even though the video showed him being kneed and whacked with batons while cuffed and prone on the ground, and then dragged off by the neck by a K-9, the police chief initially saw nothing wrong in what his officers did.

Apparently the Atlantic City police chief believes that when your prone body repeatedly strikes an officer’s knee, you are committing an assault on the officer and when you stick your head and neck inside a K-9’s mouth, you are committing an assault on a police dog.

FAMILY TO SUE ATLANTIC CITY POLICE OVER SON’S BEATING
By Wallace McKelvey

Press of Atlantic City
September 29, 2013

One of six Atlantic City police officers recorded on video beating a 20-year-old Linwood man this summer was the subject of at least three prior allegations of excessive force and civil rights violations.

Court records show K-9 Officer Sterling Wheaten has appeared as a defendant in at least three civil cases filed in the past three years.

Surveillance footage obtained via subpoena from Tropicana Casino and Resort show the officers tackling David Connor Castellani to the ground about 3:10 a.m. June 15, followed by a succession of blows from clubs and the officers’ knees.

The incident occurred off Pacific Avenue near South Morris Avenue, after Castellani was removed from Tropicana. It was unclear Saturday why he was removed.

Less than a minute later, a K-9 vehicle drives into frame. Within seconds, the K-9 is seen biting Castellani’s neck and dragging him to the curb.

“He told me he kept screaming, ‘I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting,’” his father, David Castellani, said as the video played from a laptop on his kitchen table.

Jennifer Bonjean, the Castellanis’ civil attorney, said authorities confirmed Wheaten as the K-9 officer on the tape but have not provided names for the other officers involved.

Wheaten was specifically named in at least three pending cases filed against the department in recent years, according to court records. Documents from another case, filed in Atlantic County, could not be obtained Saturday.

In the three cases where Wheaten is specifically named:

__A Burlington County man alleged officers “brutally beat,” restrained and charged him with obstruction of justice at a restaurant in 2008. The suit states the charges were later dismissed.

__A Sewell, Gloucester County, man alleged officers threw him down a flight of stairs and punched him at a nightclub in 2010. He was initially charged with obstructing, resisting arrest and aggravated assault. The suit states all three were dismissed.

__A Phildelphia man man alleged officers “grabbed, punched and restrained” him at a casino in 2011. The suit, filed earlier this month, also claims the city’s policy “routinely deprives citizens of their Constitutional rights, and/or by failing to train, supervise or discipline its officers.”

The family first brought the tape of the June 15 incident to NBC 10, which aired a report Friday in advance of a lawsuit the Castellanis said they will file Monday.

The encounter lasted less than three minutes — with police and the K-9 seen backing away shortly after 3:12 a.m. — but the elder Castellani, who is a lawyer, said it left his son with permanent injuries, including nerve damage and muscle paralysis where the K-9 grabbed onto his son’s neck.

“They’re just here standing around looking at him, like he’s a piece of meat,” said his mother, Terri, as the officers on the tape slowly back away from her son, much of his body blocked by the K-9 vehicle.

Medics arrived about eight minutes later. An officer who arrived after the arrest prevented Castellani from bringing his handcuffed hands up to feel his injuries.

Terri Castellani said her son still wore those handcuffs when, hours later, she visited him in the hospital after authorities allowed the 20-year-old to call home. His back and head “looked like Hamburger Helper,” she said, with more than 200 stitches needed to close his wounds.

“It was the most horrific sight I’d ever seen,” she said. “I never expected to walk into what I did.”

Steve Scheffler represents the younger Castellani in his criminal charges. His client, he said, was unjustifiably charged with aggravated assault on an officer and a police dog, disorderly conduct and resisting.

Based on the evidence in the video tape, Scheffler said, he’s hopeful the charges will be dropped within the next month or two. Although Scheffler has yet to see video of Castellani inside Tropicana, he said he doubts anything that happened inside the casino justified the charges.

Earlier in the video, Castellani is seen holding his hands behind his back waiting to be cuffed. Instead, the police allow him to walk several feet away and make a phone call. His parents say their son was trying to reach the friends from whom he had been separated.

A few minutes later, police allow Castellani to walk across the street. As he walks down the sidewalk, he turns back several times, exchanging words and gestures with someone — presumably police officers — behind him and on the opposite side of the street.