Settlement amount disclosed in federal lawsuit claiming Suffolk police brutality during 2012 arrest of construction worker

Suffolk County will pay $500,000 to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by a construction worker who claimed that police officers brutally beat him during a 2012 altercation in a union hall parking lot.

The county attorney’s office disclosed the dollar amount for the first time in a letter Thursday seeking final settlement approval from U.S. Eastern District Magistrate Judge Steven Tiscione. The payment was approved earlier this summer by the county legislature’s Ways & Means Committee.

Steven McCune, 55, of Commack, said he was permanently injured after officers subjected him to “barbaric physical and psychological treatment” for refusing to exit the car he was sleeping in behind the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 25 building in Hauppauge.

The heavy crane operator sought up to $40 million in damages, saying he was pummeled, taunted, stunned with a Taser in his groin and had his head grinded into the concrete by an officer’s boot after he was on the ground and handcuffed. He had taken his excessive force litigation to a jury trial when a settlement was reached after the first day of testimony in late May.

The $500,000 sum is the second this year of at least a half-million dollars that Suffolk County has agreed or been ordered to pay in connection with police brutality allegations.

Also in May, a federal jury in Central Islip found Suffolk liable for $750,000 in the "malicious prosecution" of a Deer Park man who claims police beat him during a 2014 arrest — a case that jurors found showed a pattern of misconduct in the police department.

As the county grapples with making payments totaling $1.25 million for those two cases, it is currently on trial in the same federal court for a third case of alleged police misconduct.

The family of Kenny Lazo, who died inside a police precinct in 2008, is seeking $55 million in damages and $100 million in punitive damages, alleging that officers failed to get the man immediate medical treatment after beating him with flashlights during his arrest following a traffic stop in Bay Shore.

Police say that Lazo's injuries appeared superficial and that they used appropriate force on the man, 24, who was suspected of drug dealing. They said he had tried to flee and grabbed for an officer’s gun.

The trial’s second week of testimony concluded Friday.

Newsday reported earlier this year that Long Island taxpayers have paid more than $165 million since 2000 to end lawsuits that alleged police and prosecutorial misconduct, including excessive force, false imprisonment and wrongful death.

Frederick K. Brewington, a Hempstead-based attorney who represents McCune and Lazo's family, said the near-simultaneous conclusions of similar civil rights cases against Suffolk police raise “serious questions that we need to look at with regard to accountability and transparency.”

“Those matters are coming to pass right now,” Brewington said Friday. “Suffolk County has not really corrected any of that fully. And now's the time for them to step into the 21st century.”

A spokeswoman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone didn’t immediately provide a comment Friday. Spokespeople for Suffolk Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison did not respond to requests for comment.

Records filed in McCune's litigation and testimony in the Lazo case show that Suffolk police's Internal Affairs Bureau exonerated the officers of wrongdoing in both cases without conducting interviews. For many of the involved officers, the lawsuit depositions were the first time they had faced questions about their actions.

The depth of the McCune and Lazo disciplinary probes matches several others highlighted in Newsday’s 2022 Inside Internal Affairs investigation, which revealed that Suffolk police often imposed little or no penalties in cases involving serious injuries or deaths. 

By Paul LaRocco

paul.larocco@newsday.com@paullarocco

Paul LaRocco is a reporter on the investigations desk. Since starting at Newsday in late 2010, he has also covered Nassau and Suffolk county politics and government and the Town of Oyster Bay.