Second senior NYPD officers faces investigation {OWS}
Occupy Wall Street: the New York Civilian Complaint Review Board is formally investigating allegations of assault against Johnny Cardona. Photograph: Andrew Gombert/EPA
A second senior New York police officer is being formally investigated over allegations that he assaulted an Occupy Wall Street protester, raising fresh questions over the NYPD's deployment of supervisors on the front line in volatile public order situations.
The officer, who has been named in news reports as deputy inspector Johnny Cardona, was filmed on Friday grabbing the protester from behind, spinning him round and appearing to punch him in the face so hard that he fell to the ground.
The New York Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent mayoral agency that deals with allegations of excessive or unnecessary force against police, is now investigating the incident, along with a number of other complaints over policing of the protests.
This is the second inquiry the board has launched in the last month into an alleged assault by a senior NYPD officer on Occupy Wall Street protesters. It is also investigating the use of pepper spray on peaceful female protesters by another deputy inspector, Anthony Bologna, who is also the subject of an internal NYPD inquiry.
Linda Sachs, a spokeswoman for the CCRB, said she could not comment on individual officers, but confirmed that the alleged assault was among several being investigated.
"We have several ongoing investigations involving police interactions with protesters. That includes events that occurred on Friday. Those events were videotaped," Sachs told the Guardian.
The victim of the alleged assault, Felix Rivera Pitre, has called for an investigation into Cardona's conduct. Over the weekend, new video was released of an earlier demonstration which appears to show him roughly handling a female protester from the same group that was later pepper-sprayed by Bologna.
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