Abner Louima

Abner Louima (born 1966 in Thomassin, Haiti) is a Haitian who was assaulted, brutalized, and forcibly sodomized with a broken-off broom handle by officers of the New York City Police Department after he was arrested outside a Brooklyn nightclub in 1997.

In 1997, 30-year-old Louima was married, had one child, and had lived in Brooklyn for the previous six years. Although he had been trained as an electrical engineer in Haiti, Louima worked as a security guard in a water and sewage plant in the Flatlands area of Brooklyn.

On August 9, 1997, Louima visited Club Rendez-Vous, a popular nightclub in East Flatbush. Late in the night, he and several other men interceded in a fight between two women. The police were called and several officers from the 70th Precinct were dispatched to the scene. There was a confrontation between the police, patrons and bystanders involved in the scuffle outside the club. The responding patrol officers included Justin Volpe, Charles Schwarz, Thomas Bruder, and Thomas Wiese, among others. In the ensuing scuffle, Volpe was struck by a "sucker-punch" and identified Louima as his assailant. Volpe arrested Louima on charges of disorderly conduct, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest. Volpe later admitted he was mistaken about Louima being his assailant.

The arresting officers beat Louima with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios on the ride to the station. On arriving at the station house, he was strip-searched and put in a holding cell. The beating continued later, culminating with Louima being sexually assaulted in a bathroom at the 70th Precinct station house in Brooklyn. Volpe kicked Louima in the testicles, and while Louima's hands were cuffed behind his back, he first grabbed onto and squeezed his testicles and then sexually assaulted him with a broomstick. According to trial testimony, Volpe then walked through the precinct holding the bloody, excrement-stained instrument in his hand, bragging to a police sergeant that he "took a man down tonight."

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