Brian Pfail, 35, of Garden City, awarded nearly $2.9 million after being beaten by Nassau police, court says

A federal jury in Brooklyn awarded nearly $2.9 million last week to a Garden City man who said he was beaten unconscious by plainclothes Nassau County police officers outside a Fairway Market more than a decade ago.

Brian Pfail, now 35, was standing outside what was then Fairway in Westbury in November 2014 when an unmarked Jeep Cherokee pulled up, according to Pfail’s attorney, Frederick K. Brewington. Several Nassau County police officers in plainclothes then beat Pfail using their fists and flashlights, slamming his "head into the ground while he was face down," according to Pfail's lawsuit against the Nassau police department, the officers and other defendants.

Nassau County Attorney Thomas Adams told Newsday he plans to appeal the verdict.

Pfail was watching a hockey game with a friend at a nearby Buffalo Wild Wings when he had a disagreement with the server, broke a window in the restaurant door on his way out, and then hopped a fence to get to the grocery store, Brewington said.

Police charged Pfail with assaulting the officers, resisting arrest and criminal mischief, Newsday reported in 2014. He was acquitted of all charges by a jury, except the window breaking.

The officers never identified themselves as police upon arrival, nor did they show Pfail their badges or read him his rights, instead beating and striking him.

The suit said the officers pulled his hair and used a chemical spray to his face. It also said Pfail was knocked unconscious and was left with a broken rib, a bruised lung and kidney, as well as a chipped vertebrae in his neck, and was treated with eight stitches and 10 staples in his head.

Through the course of litigation, however, it was determined that claims about several injuries detailed in the lawsuit were inaccurate. While the officers did beat Pfail unconscious with their fists and flashlights, they did not pull his hair, use a chemical spray to his face, or leave him with a broken rib, bruised lung and kidney, Brewington said Monday. Pfail suffered a traumatic brain injury — his second since 2007 — and was treated with staples on his head, he added.

“[He] should never have been treated the way that he was," Brewington told Newsday. "This is a victory, but does not change the harm that these officers have caused."

During his senior year at Chaminade High School in 2007, a group of boys beat up Pfail at a mall — leaving him with a traumatic brain injury, according to Brewington. He was still receiving treatment for seizures and PTSD from that assault in 2014, having recently completed 10 months at a brain injury rehab center upstate.

Adams, in a statement, said "Nassau County believes that there was no wrongdoing and even if there was, the damages are excessive."

"Any injury or damage incurred by [Pfail] was the result of his own actions," the county said in court.

It was not the Fairway incident that caused Pfail's "mental trauma," but rather a string of psychiatric hospital stays as well as violent incidents he perpetrated in prior years, attorneys for the police officers and the police department said in court.

After a three-week trial, the jury found that at least three police officers at the time used excessive force against Pfail: Deputy Insp. Joseph Massaro, who is now the commanding officer for Nassau’s Fifth Precinct; Det. Jonathan Panuthos; and Sgt. Thomas Iannucci. A fourth officer on the scene, Karen O'Brien, did not, the jury said.

Massaro hung up the phone when reached by Newsday on Sunday, and Panuthos declined to comment. O’Brien and Iannucci could not be reached for comment. 

Todd Shapiro, a spokesman for the Nassau Police Benevolent Association, Nassau’s largest police union, said the group does not comment on cases that could be appealed. Scott Skrynecki, a spokesman for the Nassau County Police Department, also said he could not comment on pending litigation.

Spokespeople for Nassau’s other police unions did not respond to an inquiry. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman declined to comment.