Newark Cop Charged with Assault on Teen Caught on Video

A New Jersey cop was indicted Monday for the alleged assault of a teen over a month ago.

Police Officer Angel Pared, 28, was indicted for the aggravated assault of a 15-year-old Newark boy five weeks ago, along with several other charges, according to Acting Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino.

Surveillance video from the apartment building where the boy lived shows the undercover cop walking up to the teen after a friend had passed him something -- the boy's attorney said it was simply ear buds for his iPod.

But Officer Pared confronted the boy, apparently thinking there may have been a drug deal going down.

While frisking the teen, the officer suddenly pulls back his left arm seems to hit the boy with his fist or forearm. A struggle ensued in which the teen lost some of his dreadlocks, and had his braces stuck in his the inside of his lip.

"He was defending himself. He didn't know who these people are. He's a boy," said a cousin, Kiimiysha Apkinson, who claims the officer did not identify himself properly.

Several other officers joined in, but Newark Police Director Garry McCarthy said it never should have happened.

McCarthy said the frisk was all wrong, that "you put (the suspect) in a position where they can't attack you."

"And the way you do that is you turn [him] around, put their hands on a wall, on a car," McCarthy explained.

But Officer Pared's attorney, Anthony Fusco, disagreed with the Police Director, a veteran of the NYPD, on the proper way to do a frisk.

Fusco said the "pat down" was correct, arguing that if the suspect had his back to the officer, "all he has to do is this [motioning to slip a hand into his belt] and the officer's dead."

The boy's attorney, Reuben Sinins, said it never should have gotten past the pat down.

"It should have ended there," he said, instead of escalating into an incident that kept his client out of school for weeks.

Officer Pared is also charged with using excessive force, tampering with public records and falsifying police reports. If convicted on all four counts, that could add up to a maximum of 30 years in prison.

Follow Brian Thompson on Twitter @brian4NY

Contact Us