NEW YORK (AP) – A New York police officer who has been arrested twice for alleged brutality was re-arrested on Sunday after police on Long Island said he fired a gun into the Atlantic Ocean while firing. was of service.
39-year-old David Afanador was carrying a loaded 9mm Beretta pistol and three loaded 15-magazine magazines when officers investigating a report of the shots in Long Beach saw him with three at 6:50 a.m. Sunday. other people walking off the beach, police said. .
Afanador was charged last year with putting a black man in a prohibited quiver while responding to a call at a promenade in Queens. The NYPD suspended him after that arrest without payment and then placed him on limited assignment. He was not authorized to carry firearms, police said.
A NYPD spokesman, sergeant. Edward Riley, said Afanador was again suspended without pay.
Afanador was charged Monday with a video in Long Beach City Court on charges of criminal possession of a weapon and prohibited use of a weapon. He was also cited for possession of alcohol, which is banned at Ocean Beach Park because he carried an open can of Truly Hard Seltzer, police said. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 2.
A woman stopped by Afanador is also accused of shooting the gun into the ocean. She is charged with the criminal possession of a weapon and the prohibited use of a weapon, police said.
Afanador’s lawyer left a message to comment.
Afanador, who has been with the NYPD for more than 16 years, pleaded not guilty last June to strangulation and attempted serious strangulation charges after the cellphone video showed him putting his arm around the neck of a man on the beach path of Rockaway Beach.
The man, 35-year-old Ricky Bellevue, has apparently lost consciousness. Bellevue was arrested a few weeks later in an unrelated incident in the Bronx after police said he flashed a boxer and made anti-gay statements in an attempted robbery.
Chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD for years and were banned nationwide last year. Afanador will appear in court on Wednesday.
In 2016, Afanador was acquitted on charges of hitting a 16-year-old boy with a gun during a marijuana bust., breaking two of his teeth. The beating, which was seen on the video, continued until the boy sank to the ground and was handcuffed.
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