Three police officers charged in New York subway assault

Three New York City police officers have been charged in connection with a brutal assault of a 24-year-old tattoo artist on a Brooklyn subway platform.

One of the three officers, Richard Kern, was accused of sodomizing Michael Mineo with a retractable police baton, while the other two officers watched and later covered it up.

"Mineo's screams that he had been violated were heard by several civilian witnesses," said Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes on Tuesday. Hynes said that Mineo's complaints, that he was bleeding from his rectum, "were ignored by the police officers."

The incident took place in October when Mineo was approached by police for allegedly smoking marijuana, threw a cigarette to the ground and then left into the subway station. The three officers reportedly "subdued" Mineo and forced him to the ground near the subway token booth, according to an account from The New York Times.

Kern, 25, faces a charge of aggravated sexual abuse in the first degree, while the two other officers, Alex Cruz and Andrew Morales, 26, were charged with hindering prosecution and official misconduct. Polices sources told the New York Daily News that Mineo's DNA was found on the baton.

All three officers surrendered to police on Tuesday and Morales and Cruz were released on their own recognizance. Bail for Officer Kern was set at  $15,000, significantly less than half of the $50,000 figure requested by prosecutors.

"Police critics have compared the case to that of Abner Louima, who was beaten and sodomized with a broomstick in the bathroom of a police precinct by NYPD officers," the Associated Press reported on Tuesday.

"But there are many differences between the two cases," according to AP. The 1997 Louima case "stoked racial tensions in the city," AP reported, because Louima is black and the officers white. In contrast, AP reports that Mineo is white, and the officers in this new case are black, white and Hispanic.

After the officers were arraigned in court, Mineo told reporters that his injuries still caused him pain, according to the Times. "I relive this every day," he said. "I move my bowels, I'm in pain," he said.