Philly officers beat up and used a stun gun on a grieving man, then lied about it, lawsuit says
Corey Lincoln-Conner called 911 when his friend and roomate died. The officers who removed the body assaulted and arrested him, according to a lawsuit filed in a Philadelphia court.
A police officer beat and used a stun gun on a grieving Northeast Philadelphia man as authorities removed the body of his roommate who had died hours earlier, a lawsuit says.
The complaint alleges that police officers assaulted Corey Lincoln-Conner and then charged him with aggravated assault based on false statements by the officers on the scene, all while the incident was captured by body-camera footage.
Lincoln-Conner, 34, was the live-in caretaker and friend of a chronically ill man whom he found unresponsive in their house on Jan. 24, according to the complaint, which was filed last week in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas against three police officers. Lincoln-Conner called 911 and the man, whose name isn’t included in the lawsuit, was declared dead by medics.
For the next few hours, the suit says, Lincoln-Conner waited in the house for police to transport the man’s body to the Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.
After midnight, officers Nasir Chestnut and Abraham Matos arrived, the complaint says. Lincoln-Conner “grew upset,” the suit says, by the officers’ “disrespectful handling” of the body and he “voiced those concerns.”
The officers stepped away from the body and approached Lincoln-Conner in the neighboring room, and Chestnut “grabbed Mr. Lincoln-Conner by his neck and shoved him backwards.” The two tripped and Lincoln-Conner fell on top of Chestnut.
“Within less than ten seconds, defendant Matos tased Plaintiff Lincoln-Conner,” the lawsuit says. “After Plaintiff Lincoln Conner was tased, defendant Chestnut got off the floor, stood over him and punched him in the face approximately ten times.”
During the alleged assault, the suit says, Lincoln-Conner covered his face and yelled “my hands are up, my hands are up.” Chestnut yelled an expletive and added “You going to listen now? You going to listen now?”
The punching continued while Matos and another officer yelled at Chestnut to stop, the complaint says.
When backup officers arrived, Chestnut told them that Lincoln-Conner was “in there bleeding” because “he got in my face,” according to the complaint. When they asked Chestnut if he was hurt, he shook his head and said that Lincoln-Conner “never even got a punch off,” the suit says.
Chestnut told detectives that Lincoln-Conner walked up to him in a fighting stance and that the officer grabbed him to defend himself. Lincoln-Conner was charged with assault, resisting arrest, and making terroristic threats. The officer later said in court that Lincoln-Conner punched him in the face multiple times, according to the complaint.
But body-worn camera footage showed that wasn’t what happened, the lawsuit says, and a Common Pleas judge dismissed the case in July.
“This guy is grieving the death of his good friend, and a person he is a caretaker for, in his own house,” Alan Tauber, an attorney representing Lincoln-Conner said. “If it’s happening here in that context, what is going on on the streets?”
The lawsuit names Chestnut, Matos, and a police detective, William Lackman, as defendants. It accuses them of false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and a conspiracy to assault Lincoln-Conner and provide false statements.
A spokesperson for the Philadelphia Law Department declined to comment on the active litigation.
According to an investigation into a complaint filed with police, published on the police department’s website, findings of physical abuse and verbal abuse were substantiated against at least one officer. The officers are not named in the report, and the disciplinary findings are pending.