Otto Kogen, 72, is suing the NYPD for $5 million
A 72-year-old man is suing the NYPD for a whopping $5 million, charging a group of plainclothes cops roughed him up on an upper Manhattan street .
Before he could get the keys out of his pocket, three men slammed the frail 5-foot-4, 140-pound Kogen against his 2004 Nissan Sentra.
“I thought they (were) robbing me,” recalled the Latvia-born Kogen, who lives in Jersey City with his longtime wife, Bella, and spends his spare time refurbishing antiques.
The men began rifling through his pockets, so Kogen threatened to call the police.
That’s when Kogen said one of the men flashed his badge.
“F--k you, Russian — we are the police,” the officer replied, according to court papers.
“I was in shock,” Kogen said.
Kogen managed to flag down a marked police cruiser, but the uniformed officers left after they realized he was undergoing a stop-and-frisk, the court papers show.
Soon after, the plainclothes cops left — and Kogen called 911 because he had chest pains. He spent the next two days at Roosevelt Hospital.
According to police reports, the officers said that they identified themselves nearly a dozen times when they stopped Kogen because he appeared disheveled and intoxicated.
An NYPD spokeswoman said the officers’ story was cleared by detectives from the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.
“It’s a lie,” said Kogen. “I don’t drink.”
Hospital records show that no alcohol was in his blood when he was admitted.
Kogen filed several complaints, including one with the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Then he decided to call a lawyer — Evan Nass — who in February filed the multimillion-dollar suit.
The CCRB investigation later found the claims “unsubstantiated,” mainly because there were no witnesses to corroborate Kogen’s claims.
By Joe Kemp AND Rocco Parascandola / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
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