WIVB News 4 investigates featured a story on a civil case involving a local resident and his encounter with the Buffalo Police.
Civil Rights attorney, Tony Rupp, is representing James Kistner who is suing the Buffalo police after he was struck by a police vehicle and then arrested for it. The entire ordeal was caught on security footage. Kistner’s lawsuit alleges that the officers are liable for false arrest, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution. Federal magistrate judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy has recommended that these arguments go forward.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – An attorney for a Buffalo man suing the city and several police officers said his client was “framed” through a “web of lies” to cover up for an officer accused of hitting his client with her car.
On Jan. 1, 2017, James Kistner exited his Schmarbeck Avenue home to ask Buffalo police officers, who were already in their cars, why they had just been at his rental apartment across the street.
But none stopped to talk to him.
Instead, Kistner alleged that one of the officers struck him with her vehicle as he approached it, throwing him to the ground with a minor head injury.
The entire scene was captured on his surveillance camera.
The officer, Lauren McDermott, didn’t render care to Kistner; she threatened to arrest him if he did not heed her order to get up off the ground. Police officers also canceled an ambulance for Kistner, who was complaining of head pain and tried twice to get him admitted to the psych ward at ECMC.
Police charged Kistner with disorderly conduct and criminal mischief, a felony, for alleged damage to the vehicle’s side mirror, but a city court judge eventually dismissed the charges.
Police officers involved in the arrest testified at their depositions that Kistner threw himself at the police vehicle.
Now, a Jan. 11 report and recommendation by federal magistrate judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy further tests the credibility of the officers’ testimony and deems the civil case “extremely disturbing.”
WIVB