NEW YORK POST
COPS INFLICTED HERNIA HELL: SUIT
By ALEX GINSBERG
May 22, 2007 -- A Brooklyn student is looking to put the hurt on the city after spending an agony-filled night in a precinct cell just one day after hernia surgery - minus his pain medication.
Simon Weiss, 22, said cops ignored evidence of his surgery when they arrested him on May 9 for possession of two pills. Not even a call from his Beth Israel Hospital doctor - a police surgeon - could free him.
"They're not human," Weiss, who filed a $1 million notice of claim last week, said of arresting cop Jason Reynolds and others at the 70th Precinct.
Weiss, who attends Yeshiva University, and a friend were pulled over at Coney Island Avenue and Avenue O just after 3 p.m.
When the cops found the pills, Weiss showed them his bandages. His roommate even rushed to the precinct with a copy of the prescription - to no avail.
By midnight, Weiss, in too much agony to sit or lie down, was leaning against a cell wall and moaning for an ambulance. At 4 a.m., cops finally took him to Coney Island Hospital - where doctors treated him with .
"Officer Reynolds had so many opportunities to release Simon," said lawyer Saul Bienenfeld. "The fact that he continued to keep my client in custody is egregious and warrants that he be censured."
Prosecutors dismissed the case. Sources said Reynolds denied that anyone documented Weiss' prescription.
NEW YORK POST
$11 MIL IN 'TORN BEARD' ARREST
By ALEX GINSBERG
January 3, 2007 -- A Hasidic man who claims his beard was torn and his reputation shredded when an NYPD sergeant improperly arrested him during a wild riot last spring is demanding $11 million from the city and the department, The Post has learned.
In court papers filed last week, Chaim Appel, 38, claims that he was tossed against the hood of a car, his face bruised and his glasses smashed, before he was cuffed and hauled off to jail while his 9-year-old son looked on.
"The major injury is total, total embarrassment," said his lawyer, Saul Bienenfeld. "Every time he walks into shul, they say, 'There's the guy they arrested during the riots.' "
Cops said Appel tried to trip the sergeant during a tense standoff last April 4 between the officers and a mob angrily protesting the ticketing of an elderly bakery owner at 47th Street and 16th Avenue in Borough Park.
But prosecutors dropped the charges, which included attempted assault, menacing, harassment and obstructing governmental administration, at Appel's first court appearance in May following his arraignment.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn DA declined comment, saying all records in the criminal case have been sealed.
Bienenfeld said Appel, a law student and paralegal, was with his son, returning home from an optometrist's office, when they were caught up in the riot.
Father and son tried to take shelter in a vestibule, but were pushed by a surging crowd into the sergeant, Thomas Gulotta.
Bienenfeld said Gulotta caught Appel by the beard, yanked it partially off, then slammed him down onto a hood of a car.
The suit claims Appel suffered bruising and substantial pain as a result of the rough treatment.
Following the incident, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Appel had tried to trip Gulotta.
The suit, filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, also demands damages for Appel's son, Shlomie, who allegedly saw the arrest and was left alone when his father was hauled off.
Bienenfeld said cops ignored his client's pleas that he be allowed to make arrangements for the boy's safe return home.
"His son is really traumatized by this," said Bienenfeld. "He watched his father before his eyes get beat up by a cop. He's petrified of cops."
The lawyer said Appel filed suit only after interviews with the Civilian Complaint Review Board and detectives from Internal Affairs appeared to go nowhere.
Some 20 fires were set during the riot, and police cars were vandalized.
The department's highest ranking uniformed officer, Chief of Department Joseph Esposito, was accusing of telling cops to, "get these f- - -ing Jews out of here."
Esposito later apologized for using profanity, but maintained that he had said "people" instead of "Jews."
The Police Department declined comment.
The City Law Department said it had not yet received the papers and could not comment.
In the days following the rioting, leaders in the Hasidic community criticized the police handling of the matter as heavy-handed.
Mayor Bloomberg defended the cops and told reporters, "From what I can tell, the Police Department acted appropriately."
Additional reporting by Erika Martinez
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New York Post
NICK DOES A BANG-UP JOB ON PHONE FOTOG
By RICHARD JOHNSON with PAULA FROELICH, CHRIS WILSON and BILL HOFFMANN
July 30, 2006 -- NICK Lachey wasn't ready for his close-up early Friday morning. Younes Renak, 18, an Upper East Side native home for the summer from Penn State, claims Lachey roughed him after he tried to snap a
cellphone picture of the pretty-boy singer around 2 a.m. Renak says Lachey went bonkers and began pushing him around inside an elevator at the fashiona ble Rivergate apartment building on East 34th Street where Lachey's TV hottie friend, Vanessa Minnillo, lives. "It was a cellphone [camera], it wasn't a paparazzi kind of thing," Renak's lawyer, Saul Bienenfeld, told The Post's David K. Li. "We're talking about an 18-year-old kid taking in life in the big city." He said Renak might sue. But reps for the ex-Mr. Jessica Simpson say Renak started pestering Lachey at a tore and then followed him into the building and the elevator. "We believe it was a lot more than a young man trying to take a picture," said Lachey's lawyer. Mitch Schuster. His publicist, Ken Sunshine raged, "This harassment with camera phones - it's just out of control." Renak says he still has his cellphone and pictures of Nick, although he declined to share them with us.
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DADDY WHACK FUROR - GAL SUES MOB COPS
New York Post - New York, N.Y.
Author: JANON FISHER
Date: Jun 25, 2006
A Luchese soldier told his daughter before his , "If I ever die mysteriously, the police had something to do with it." And Mary Ann DiLapi, the daughter of slain gangster Anthony DiLapi, had planned to testify to that during the trial of mob cops Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito in April. But the feds switched their strategy at the last minute and didn't call her to the stand, said DiLapi's lawyer, Saul Bienenfeld.
Now DiLapi, 47, is suing the convicted hit-men cops and the NYPD for $50 million in Brooklyn federal court.
In 1990, just months before Eppolito retired from the NYPD, according to the suit, he and Caracappa hunted down the location of DiLapi, who was on the run from Brooklyn mob boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.
"He was trying to get out of the life," Bienenfeld said. Casso interpreted his retirement as disloyalty and wanted to rub him out.
Caracappa ran DiLapi's name through a department database to get his address and turned it over to Casso, according to the suit.
On Feb. 4, 1990, a masked man shot DiLapi nine times in an underground garage in California.
The NYPD is culpable in DiLapi's , the suit charges, because Eppolito had been suspended six years earlier after the FBI accused him of passing sensitive files pertaining to an organized-crime investigation over to a known criminal.
There are now five families suing Caracappa and Eppolito, who were convicted of conspiracy to DiLapi and seven others.
"They took a lot of people's fathers away, and that's something they're going to have to pay for," said DiLapi in a telephone interview from her home in Salt Lake City.
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'GYNO' PERV LURED VICTIMS WITH JOB AD: DA
New York Post - New York, N.Y.
Author: ALEX GINSBERG and MARK BULLIET
Date: Dec 16, 2005
(Copyright 2005, The New York Post. All Rights Reserved)
A phony gynecologist who lured unsuspecting women to Queens hotel rooms for "exams" netted his prey by advertising a doctor's- assistant job with an employment agency, prosecutors said yesterday.
Alan Psaty, 55, the son of a former Queens assemblyman, allegedly placed the ad with Brooklyn-based agency Rose Hill Inn, claiming he was a doctor named Richard Rubin and that he was looking for an assistant - preferably a female immigrant.
"Masquerading as a medical doctor, the defendant is alleged to have intentionally taken advantage of the implicit trust that is the foundation of the doctor-patient relationship to ually assault and exploit vulnerable women for his own ual gratification," said Queens DA Richard Brown.
"Such exploitation cannot be tolerated."
The husband of one of Psaty's alleged victims said, "He's a pervert. . . . This guy, he's going to get what he deserves. Karma is a very strong thing."
Psaty, a waterproofer from Cedarhurst, L.I., was taken to Queens Hospital Center Wednesday night after he complained of chest pains during a police line-up, sources said.
He was to be arraigned at the hospital today on charges of aggravated ual abuse and unauthorized use of a professional title. His lawyer, Saul Bienenfeld, declined comment.
Psaty's father, Martin Psaty, served one term in the mid-'60s in the state Assembly. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.
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Long Island
Former senator plans to sue LIRR over gap fall
BY REID EPSTEIN
Newsday Staff Writer
October 26, 2006, 3:32 PM EDT
Former State Sen. Carol Berman, who fell into a gap at the Long Island Rail Road's Lawrence station, has filed a notice of claim, announcing her intention to sue the railroad for $1 million, her attorney announced Thursday.
Berman, 83, fell into a 10-inch space between the station platform and the train on Sept. 28. She suffered a broken leg and bruised ribs in the fall, according to Saul Bienenfeld, her attorney. Berman, of Lawrence, is now confined to a wheelchair and is unable to walk "more than a few steps," Bienenfeld said.
The suit is the second announced this week against the LIRR.
On Monday, Peter Smead, whose 18-year-old daughter Natalie Smead was killed in August when she fell into a gap at Woodside and was struck by a train, filed a notice of claim stating he intended to sue the railroad for $5 million.
