Long Island Cops Took Black Man’s Prosthetic Leg, Broke His Eye Socket

A Black dis­abled man has filed a $50 mil­lion law­suit against the police he claims used exces­sive force after wrong­ly accus­ing him of a crime he did not com­mit. “I thought I was going to die in this sit­u­a­tion,” said Waverly Lucas, 48, an amputee who uses a pros­thet­ic leg. “The only rea­son they stopped him was because of the col­or of his skin,” said Heather Palmore, chief tri­al coun­sel with the Napoli Shkolnik law firm and Lucas’ attorney.

It’s been a year since Lucas of Long Island, New York was the vic­tim of a vio­lent arrest by Suffolk County police as he attempt­ed to vis­it the con­ve­nience store near his home.

“The gas sta­tion I was going to was at the cor­ner from my house that I lived for all my life so you might just go there to get a soda or some­thing to drink,” Lucas said.

Lucas says, he just pulled up to a Gulf gas sta­tion in the Long Island town of Wyandach, New York, on Aug. 18, 2021, and as he was get­ting out of his car prepar­ing to go inside, he was putting on his pros­thet­ic leg when Suffolk County police offi­cers Michael Casey and Michael Renna approached him, ask­ing for his iden­ti­fi­ca­tion and accused him of uri­nat­ing in public.

“There’s no evi­dence of that, what’s clear is he had stopped his vehi­cle and he had attempt­ed to put his leg on to walk into the con­ve­nience store and there’s noth­ing else oth­er than that,” Palmore said.

Lucas began record­ing the police encounter on Facebook Live, which shows what hap­pened next, when police became phys­i­cal­ly aggres­sive with him. According to the law­suit filed over the inci­dent, an offi­cer placed Lucas in a choke­hold, then grabbed his arms and wrenched them. After hav­ing his arms pulled to be hand­cuffed, Lucas was shoved towards the police car and placed into the back seat.

“I thought I was going to die in this sit­u­a­tion because I’m being choked out and I don’t know if anybody’s ever been choked out, but you go to sleep, and I just thought I was going to die and there was noth­ing I could do,” Lucas said.

The law­suit also accus­es the offi­cers of pulling on Lucas’ pros­thet­ic leg and throw­ing it into the trunk of the police car, leav­ing the ampu­tat­ed Lucas in seri­ous pain.

“It was excru­ci­at­ing pain, when some­one is try­ing to bend some­thing that is con­nect­ed to your body and when you’ve got your kneecap pop­ping out at the same time, you’re not think­ing about any at the time but the pain that you’re going through and that’s all I can remem­ber think­ing at the time is the excru­ci­at­ing pain,” Lucas said.

Once tak­en to jail, Lucas’ trou­bles con­tin­ued as he was charged with obstruc­tion, resist­ing arrest and pos­ses­sion of his doc­tor-pre­scribed Oxycodone pain med­i­cine. Those charges were lat­er dropped.

“Maybe an hour or so pri­or to all of this hap­pen­ing, so it was a brand-new pre­scrip­tion, it was dat­ed and logged and it’s fed­er­al record every time you get a nar­cot­ic,” Lucas said

After first being sent to jail, Lucas was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal where he did not receive treat­ment — at least not at first, accord­ing to his attorney.

“He wasn’t treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal because he was in cus­tody at the time and the way he was being treat­ed at the hos­pi­tal is not that what you would expect,” Palmore said.

Palmore says Lucas returned back to jail to be processed and booked. When Lucas final­ly left the jail for good, he was tak­en by ambu­lance back to the hos­pi­tal but with­out his pros­thet­ic leg which had been tak­en by police, the law­suit claims Lucas was left to hop on one leg out of the police precinct. 

“When he returns back to the hos­pi­tal, he was made to crawl out of the precinct, crawl out of the precinct and was removed back to the same hos­pi­tal and had to stay overnight and that’s when he was diag­nosed with the frac­tured orbital due to the arrest,” Palmore said.

With a slew of alle­ga­tions lodged against the Suffolk County police, Atlanta Black Star request­ed a response from the Suffolk County Police Department. A spokes­woman said by phone, the depart­ment had no comment.

“They per­formed an ille­gal search of his vehi­cle after he was already in cus­tody, took the keys out of his hand and entered his vehi­cle although he wasn’t there so there are a lot of lay­ers here,” Palmore said.

Lucas filed a $50 mil­lion exces­sive force law­suit against the police on Aug. 8. He and his lawyer want to see pol­i­cy change so the department’s pat­tern of tar­get­ing peo­ple of col­or will stop.

“Policy change, dis­ci­pli­nary action against the offi­cers,” Palmore said. “This is a micro­cosm of what goes on every sin­gle day in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or here,” she continued.