A New York judge
has awarded $4.5 million to a Black gay man who claimed that Hasidic safety
patrol members beat him severely in 2013 and caused him to lose sight in one
eye.
“It’s been
nine years,” said Taj Patterson, the New York Daily News reports. “A lot of back and forth. A lot of legal scenarios
I didn’t understand. It was a long process.”
Patterson was
attacked nearly ten years ago by a group of religious volunteers, the
Williamsburg Safety Patrol while walking alone in Brooklyn. After years of
litigation, he was awarded millions for pain and suffering.
“I was a
22-year-old kid going out for a friend’s birthday,” Patterson, a student in New
York at the time, told McClatchy News in a phone interview, the Miami
Herald reports. “I didn’t think my life would change so
drastically so quickly.”
Years of legal
battles came to an end toward the end of September.
Earlier on
December 1, 2013, the safety patrol received a call that a Black person was
vandalizing cars in Williamsburg, Patterson said.
He said they
apparently apprehended the first Black person they saw — him.
After seeing
him alone in the neighborhood, the group beat him.
“So I guess
they took it upon themselves to apprehend the first Black person they saw,”
Patterson told the paper.
Despite
Patterson’s injuries, police closed their investigation into the incident after
Patterson was sent to the hospital, according to the Herald. There
were no arrests made in the incident, according
to the document, which was filed in court.
New York
Police Department’s Hate Crimes Unit contacted Patterson and his mother
following media coverage they were able to generate to call attention to the
incident.
The
investigation resulted in the arrest of five people. The court documents
indicate two cases were dismissed; two pleaded guilty to misdemeanors; one was
convicted of gang assault and unlawful imprisonment. That conviction was,
however, overturned in 2018.
Patterson sued
the city, alleging that police were “inappropriately involved” in the patrol,
which the city finances at least partially.
During the
September 19 hearing, Judge Miriam Sunshine said, the Daily News reports,
“I am going to put it as an award in favor of Taj Patterson against all of the
defendants in the sum of $4.5 million of which $3 million is for past pain and
suffering and $1.5 million is for future.”
In Patterson’s
view, the Herald reports, there is no way to quantify the
value of an individual’s eyesight, limbs, or body.
He said, “I
was violated in a very major way...But with that said, I’m glad that it’s all
over...”
SOURCE: ADVOCATE
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