An NYPD cop is set to become rich at taxpayer expense — after a jury awarded him $15 million for an injury he suffered in an off-duty scuffle with fellow officers.
Officer Larry Jackson says his hand was fractured so badly after police responded to a 911 call during his daughter’s birthday party that he can no longer fire his gun and may have to retire.
The officer claims the other cops mistook him for a troublemaker at the 2010 party because he is black and roughed him up, resulting in the injury.
Stunned city lawyer Matthew Modaferri called the mammoth award exorbitant.
“The verdict is clearly excessive,” Modaferri said.
Jackson said that his wife called 911 when an altercation broke out during the party at their Queens home.
Jackson claims the cops thought he was responsible for the trouble, and beat him with batons, kicked him and blasted him with pepper spray, according to his complaint.
“Dude, I am a police officer, too,” Jackson said he told the cops, according to his Brooklyn federal lawsuit. But, he claims, his protests were ignored.
City lawyers countered at trial that Jackson punched the officers amid the chaos and that the confrontation spilled out onto the street.
His suit, filed in 2011, says that his shooting hand was so severely injured that he might be forced to retire from the force.
He remains, however, an active officer.
Jackson and his attorney, Eric Sanders, asserted that Jackson was targeted by the police because he is black.
Jackson, who was not charged with a crime, said that none of the officers from the 113th Precinct was disciplined for their role in the fracas.
The Queens District Attorney investigated Jackson’s claims that his fellow officers used excessive force, but found no wrongdoing.
The jury awarded $12.5 million in damages for false arrest and excessive force, and $2.6 million in punitive damages.
“Mr. Jackson was vindicated by law-abiding decent people in a federal district court,” Sanders told The Post. “This matter is damn shameful on so many levels I’d rather not say anything else about it.”
In a statement to The Post, a city Law Department spokesman said that the verdict was still subject to posttrial motions that could knock it down:
“Nothing is final. Indeed, the judge’s posttrial review could lead to the verdict being set aside or a new trial.”