The man who filmed the fatal 2014 arrest of Eric Garner on a Staten Island street is suing the city for $10 million, saying that his own arrest in June 2015 on the Lower East Side was “retaliation” for the Garner video.
The Manhattan drug possession charges against Ramsey Orta were dropped after he spent seven days in jail.
“He feels he was unjustly singled out for arrest because he took that film of his friend getting arrested. The police have gone out of their way to follow him and arrest him every chance they get,” his lawyer, Andrew Plasse, told the Daily News.
Orta, 26, is now laying low with his wife in Las Vegas, waiting to report to court Oct. 3 for sentencing on gun possession and drug charges that did stick.
Two weeks after filming Garner’s death from a police choke hold, Orta was arrested on Staten Island on charges of possessing a .25 caliber Norton semiautomatic handgun. Six months later, he was caught selling heroin to an undercover cop.
In a plea deal with Staten Island prosecutors, Orta will get four years in jail for pleading guilty to those charges.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday in Manhattan Supreme Court charges that the June 2015 arrests in Manhattan were unwarranted and an effort by the NYPD to “discredit” Orta’s video.
The video — which was first posted on NYDailyNews.com — showed Officer Daniel Pantaleo put Garner in a banned chokehold despite the suspect’s repeated plea, “I can’t breathe.”
In court papers, Plasse says Orta’s film “was seen by millions” and led to “calls for change in the way the NYPD handles arrests and medical care for arrestees.” Court papers say the video also triggered protest marches that have cost the city millions and fed into a nationwide movement calling for “an end to the murder of civilians by police.”
However, “instead of winning accolades for his professional journalism and/or being praised by the media for his exposure of brutal police tactics and the failure of EMTs to assist victims of Police Brutality, (Orta) was maligned and smeared by the NYPD, (and) arrested continually on false and/or trumped up charges,” court papers say.
Plasse said that even though Orta had been arrested before Garner’s death, the frequency picked up afterward.
“Twenty six felonies on Staten Island! If he were sentenced on all of them, he’d do more time than (Son of Sam serial killer) David Berkowitz,” Plasse said. Instead, he said, 25 of the felonies were tossed.
In his court papers, Plasse says the arrests are “retaliation for (Orta’s) exercising his first amendment rights in protesting police brutality and as a result, (Orta) sustained an unreasonable search and seizure and deprivation of liberty without due process of law.”
He says the arrests are also designed to “discourage journalists…from filming the police.”
A rep for the city Law Department said, “We will review all the allegations once we get the complaint.”
Orta’s planning other legal actions against the city as well.
Last year he filed a notice of claim indicating that his food was doctored with rat poison while he was in a mental health lockup in March 2015. Earlier this year he notified the city that he planned to sue for a March 2016 summons that he got on the lower East Side.
All told, his filings indicate he’s looking for $30 million from the city.
