A technician for a Brooklyn computer company has been busted for doctoring a video surveillance tape from the Kettle Black Bar, where a weekend melee erupted that left an off-duty NYPD cop, a Port Authority police and a FDNY firefighter injured and five suspects under arrest.
Jasmin Pontic, 27, an employee of Vanguard Security Systems, was summoned early Sunday to the Kettle Black Bar, in Bay Ridge, to retrieve a copy of video surveillance that contained some of the action that had occurred there, sources said.
The fisticuffs erupted after an off-duty cop, Paul Aparo, from the 77th Precinct, was slugged with a bottle inside the pub, sparking a brawl that spilled outside.
As revealed exclusively in Tuesday’s editions of The Post, an employee of Vanguard – now identified as Pontic — erased about a minute of footage before handing off a copy of the videotape to NYPD detectives assigned to the Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU).
Officials offered varying interpretations on why Pontic erased the videotape.
When TARU investigators examined the videotape they got from Pontic more closely, they saw that the “date code stamp” had jumped, indicating that a portion of the tape was missing.
They were able to retrieve the original from the computer’s hard drive, sources said.
When the melee ended, Port Authority Officer Ryan McCarthy, 29, was left with a broken jaw and FDNY firefighter Rosario Cicero, 30, with a severed artery in his arm and five men – including four relatives of State Sen. Martin Golden – were arrested.
Pontic was hit with charges of tampering with physical evidence, an E felony, and obstruction of governmental administration – an E felony punishable by up to four years in prsion.
A spokesman for Vanguard Security did not return calls for comment.