Four years after NYPD cops beat and sodomized him with a broomstick in a Brooklyn station-house bathroom, Abner Louima agreed yesterday to an $8.75 million settlement.
“I don’t really see myself as a rich man,” Louima said. “I see myself as someone who is lucky to be alive and able to see some justice.”
At a press conference, Louima and his lawyers took credit for inspiring a number of recent reforms in the way the NYPD and the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association handle police misconduct – a claim city and police union lawyers scoffed at.
“There is no link between the lawsuit and the changes,” said Larry Kahn, a lawyer for the city.
ButLouima lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said:”The fact is, change has occurred in the manner in which the police and the PBA function, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s written in an agreement or who takes credit for it.”
Louima was mistaken for a man who punched then-Officer Justin Volpe during a fight outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997. Volpe arrested Louima, dragged him to the station house and sodomized him in the bathroom in a monstrous act of misplaced revenge.
Volpe pleaded guilty in 1999 and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Another officer, Charles Schwarz, was convicted of aiding in the attack, and four other cops, including one PBA delegate, were convicted in a subsequent cover-up.
The imprisoned Schwarz is appealing his conviction.
Among the police reforms for which Louima and his lawyers claimed responsibility were:
* Fast-tracking the demise of the controversial 48-hour rule, which allows cops two days before they have to talk to investigators probing police misconduct. City officials have said they will sign no new police union contracts that include the rule.
* Spurring the installation of a new PBA “conflicts counsel,” an independent lawyer paid by the union to provide confidential counsel to cops who witness police brutality and don’t want to confide in PBA lawyers or delegates.
* Forcing the PBA to hire outside experts to retrain PBA supervisors.
The city will pay $7.125 million of the settlement sum and the PBA will kick in $1.625 million. Louima will get $5.8 million, with the remaining $2.9 million going to his lawyers.