Taxpayers Just Paid $32,500 For Sack Of White Castle Burgers Thanks To Dumb Cop
A sack of White Castle sliders may have just nabbed the world record for most expensive fast food meal ever.
The city agreed to dole out $32,500 of taxpayer money to compensate two men arrested and allegedly beaten for not forking over the meal to Coney Island police officers.
The case first came to light in March when two men, Danny Maisonet and Kenneth Glover filed suit against the NYPD, claiming they were falsely arrested in 2012 by police officers who wanted their meals.
The two say they got out of a cab carrying the sweaty sliders on Halloween 2012 at Neptune Avenue, where cops were rounding up a group of suspected looters. The officers demanded the burgers, the men claimed, and were rebuffed.
The New York Post describes what happened next:
Enraged by the denial, the officers began to beat the men with flashlights and eventually arrested them for obstruction of governmental administration, according to the suit.
Officers, meanwhile, accused them of blocking their way as they tried to round up the looters, court papers state.
The pair were held for two days and were forced to attend several court appearances before the charges against them were tossed.
Officer Angelo Pizzarro filed the report, swearing that the men were standing in his way during the struggle with the alleged looters.
In an unrelated case, Pizzarro was described by an assistant district attorney as “not the brightest tool in the shed,” after the cop’s “bizarre and implausible” testimony regarding missing evidence caused that case to be lost. Pizzarro was part of a team of Coney Island housing cops who said they spotted a man with a gun in his waistband.
The Daily News reports:
But when Pizzarro was called to testify at a hearing in November, he claimed his memo book detailing the arrest had been “washed away” with his locker by Sandy.
Later it was learned that Pizzarro had previously handed over the missing memo book to the city Law Department in a separate lawsuit. Questioned why the memo book was not waterlogged and the ink still legible, Pizzarro came up with this explanation: “There are pens that write under water. It won’t leave a blemish, a running mark or anything.”
The judge in that case referred Pizzarro’s testimony to the Internal Affairs Bureau for investigation. It’s unclead if the “separate lawsuit” mentioned above is the White Castle suit or a third, unrelated lawsuit involving the officer.
The White Castle suit was dismissed Wednesday, with the city agreeing to pay Glover $20,000 and Maisonett $12,500.