A Staten Island man claimed Monday that he was falsely arrested on gun charges as retribution for taking the infamous “chokehold” video of Eric Garner‘s deadly scuffle with cops last month.
Ramsey Orta, 22, said a cop told him that “karma’s a bitch” and “what goes around, comes around” while he rode in a NYPD police van after getting busted outside the drug-infested Richmond Hotel on Saturday night.
“They pulled out their cameras and started videotaping me before I even went to the precinct,” Orta said by phone from custody after his arraignment.
“I was in the van, and I said, ‘Excuse me officer, you’re violating my rights right now. Why are you videotaping me? You’re a cop, you shouldn’t be videotaping me right now,’ ” Orta said.
“And that’s when he said, ‘Shut your mouth,’ and, ‘Karma’s a bitch, what goes around comes around.’
“They trying to set me up for the longest,” he added.
According to law-enforcement sources, Orta stuffed a stolen, .25-caliber pistol in the waistband of a 17-year-old girl as they walked out of the hotel. The girl also was allegedly caught with marijuana.
On July 17, Orta captured video of cops struggling to arrest Garner for allegedly selling loose cigarettes, and his death in custody has been ruled a homicide by the city Medical Examiner’s Office.
One of the cops, Daniel Pantaleo, apparently put Garner into a banned chokehold and has been stripped of his gun and badge pending the investigation.
The Rev. Al Sharpton on Sunday called for Staten Island DA Dan Donovan to step aside and let the feds handle the case due to the “conflict” of having to decide whether to prosecute Orta, who’s likely to be a key witness.