Lawsuit: Video shows bone-breaking arrest
BURLINGTON CITY - A Philadelphia man claims police officers pinned him to the ground and broke his arm during a predawn arrest captured on video.
Steven S. Kahn, who has filed an excessive-force lawsuit against Burlington City and its police department, contends he never resisted officers during an incident outside a Route 130 Wawa in February 2014.
A dash-cam video initially shows a calm scene as officers speak to Kahn, then 60, and a young woman in his parked car around 3:30 a.m. But in a matter of minutes, one officer begins to shout at the woman, who is removed from the car, thrown against the hood of a patrol car and handcuffed.
The police then return to Kahn's car, where he is pulled from his seat by two officers and falls to the ground. Kahn can be heard screaming as officers pull at his arms, apparently fracturing his left arm, before cuffing his hands behind his back.
“The quick escalation of violence was swift, severe and unprovoked,” asserts the suit, filed Monday in federal court, Camden.
Michael J. McKenna, a Cherry Hill attorney representing Kahn, said the video "demonstrates a use of force by police against a 60-year-old man so excessive that it can only be called sickening."
McKenna, who plans to use the video as evidence in the case, notes his client was taken to a police station, instead of a hospital, after the incident.
An attorney for Burlington City could not be reached for comment.
According to the suit, police went to the Wawa after Kahn's passenger was involved in a dispute over a clerk's refusal to sell her tobacco products without an ID.
The suit says Kahn sat “quietly and peacefully” in his car while the woman was arrested for disorderly conduct. The suit alleges Patrolman Jeremy Bright then approached Kahn and believed he saw the man “nudge” the remnants of a marijuana cigarette into a Wawa coffee cup.
Bright ordered Kahn to step out of his vehicle, then pulled him out “without giving Mr. Kahn time to unbuckle his seat belt," says the suit.
It says Bright repeatedly ordered Kahn to "stop resisting," while the Philadelphia man shouted, "“I’m not doing nothing."
The suit says Bright “slammed” Kahn’s face into the ground, then knelt on Kahn's back while holding the man's left arm in an arm lock. A second officer, William Lancenese, also “applied weight and force on top of Mr. Kahn,” the suit says.
It says Kahn was ordered to put his right arm behind his back, but could not do so because it was pinned beneath his stomach by the officers' weight.
At that point, the suit alleges, Bright “suddenly and with great force” bent Kahn’s left arm, breaking it.
The suit says the use of handcuffs on Kahn “caused further agony and suffering.” It also claims other officers at the scene “did not prevent the excessive use of force or the improper use of restraint.”
McKenna said Kahn entered a conditional plea in municipal court to charges arising from the arrest, and that his record has since been expunged.
Jim Walsh; (856) 486-2646; jwalsh@gannettnj.com