The lowly Brooklyn bodega cashier who tried to take on the NYPD — insisting he had been busted on bogus crack-possession charges by crooked cops who just wanted to jack up their overtime — lost his court case Friday.
The bodega worker, Hector Cordero, failed to prove that cops arrested him with malicious intent, one juror in the Brooklyn federal civil-rights trial later explained.
“I would very much have liked to find in favor” of Cordero, said the juror, who asked not to be named.
“[But] ultimately, his team really didn’t present a strong enough case for malicious prosecution,” the juror said.
Asked how he felt after the verdict, Cordero, 59, shook his head and said, “Very sad.”
His lawsuit against the NYPD had alleged that he was a victim of “collars for dollars,” an unspoken system in which cops allegedly gin up late-shift arrests to boost their overtime pay.
Cordero’s side had exposed repeated instances of bad record-keeping, poor policing and exaggerated overtime claims among the five cops who had a hand in the arrest.
“When these police set aside truthfulness, it puts all of us in danger,” his lawyer, Baree Fett, said in closing arguments.
Ultimately, “there was no drug sale” four years ago outside Cordero’s Bushwick bodega, she said.
But Assistant Corporation Counsel Brian Francolla told jurors in his own closing arguments that “mere mistakes in paperwork” are not enough to prove malice on the part of the cops.