Another day, another [what would appear to the naked eye as vicious and brutal] videotaped police [overre-] action condoned or excused.

“A New York policeman who was caught on video apparently body slamming a woman to a tile floor has been acquitted of civil rights violations,” the Associated Press reports. “Jurors in federal court in White Plains found 39-year-old Yonkers Police Officer Wayne Simoes (SIM’-oze) not guilty Wednesday afternoon.”

The AP adds, “The video, from a restaurant surveillance camera, seemed to show the officer lifting 44-year-old Irma Marquez by her waist and throwing her face-first to the floor. She was knocked unconscious and her jaw was broken.”

The forewoman of the jury, Jhonna Van Dunk, told an upstate New York newspaper, “We watched the video and we watched the frame-by-frame and we could not determine that he intended to hurt her.”

In June of 2008, Simoes’ lawyer told the press that the video doesn’t tell the full story.

“What the video doesn’t show is the operation of Wayne Simoes’ mind at the time of the incident,” Andrew Quinn said. “That’s what’s going to be a critical issue in this case is whether or not his intent when he was subduing Ms. Marquez was to violate her Constitutional rights or cause any type of injury.”

LoHud.com reported last week,

A Yonkers police officer said yesterday that his colleague Wayne Simoes used excessive force when he threw Irma Marquez to the floor of La Fonda Restaurant on March 3, 2007, breaking her jaw and bruising her face.

Officer John Liberatore was the first witness called to the stand yesterday as Simoes’ federal criminal trial began in U.S. District Court in White Plains.

Liberatore said he saw Simoes grab Marquez around the waist, lift her into the air and throw her to the ground. Afterward, Liberatore said he went to his partner Officer Todd Mendelson and asked him, “What the … just happened?”

Since, as LoHud.com reported, “the jury of eight men and four women deliberated for a little more than five hours yesterday in U.S. District Court in White Plains,” it’s assumed that Ms. Van Dunk and her fellow jurors were able to beat the rush hour traffic home Wednesday night.

A PDF of Marquez’s $11,300,000.00 lawsuit can be accessed at this link.

This video is from WKRG, broadcast June 30, 2008.

Download video via RawReplay.com

posted by David Edwards and Ron Brynaert