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Khalik Jones of Queens files lawsuit against Suffolk and its police department alleging violations of civil rights, court papers say

A Queens man whose drug conviction was overturned is suing... — A Queens man whose drug conviction was overturned is suing Suffolk County and members of its police department, alleging his civil rights were violated. Credit: Newsday/John Keating

By Grant Parpangrant.parpan@newsday.com @GrantParpanUpdated May 18, 2023

A Queens man whose drug conviction was overturned last year is suing Suffolk County and members of its police department, alleging his civil rights were violated when he was arrested without sufficient evidence he had committed a crime.

The suit, filed in U.S. Eastern District Court in Central Islip last week, relies on a Feb. 9, 2022 appellate court decision that determined a bag of heroin found in a police car and statements made to investigators by Khalik Jones, 41, of Jamaica, should not have been allowed at his 2017 trial for third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.

Jones, who was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 15 years in prison, served nearly five years behind bars before Acting Suffolk Supreme Court Justice Steven Pilewski dismissed the charges against him one day after the reversal decision was issued by the four-judge panel of the Brooklyn-based New York Supreme Court Appellate Division.

The complaint filed May 10 by civil rights attorney Brett Klein of Manhattan calls the conviction “unjust” and the prosecution “malicious.” The suit names as co-defendants Suffolk police officers Michael Petrucci, Thomas Schmidt, Nicholas Robbins, Richard Brooks and Edward Zimmerman along with 10 unnamed police defendants.

WHAT TO KNOW

Khalik Jones, 41, of Jamaica, Queens, is suing Suffolk County and its police department alleging his civil rights were violated.
A 2022 appellate court decision that vacated his criminal possession of a controlled substance determined on the ground that the evidence was legally insufficient to establish probable cause.
Police had said Jones was loitering at a known drug location and they found a bag of heroin in a police vehicle after arresting him and taking him to the Seventh Precinct. An officer testified that he admitted "trying to ditch" the drugs.

The suit alleges Petrucci and Schmidt made “false claims” that Jones was loitering in the vicinity of a known Mastic drug location on May 16, 2017, according to the complaint.

It states the officers did not see him engage in a drug transaction and no drugs or money were found in his possession, but Robbins and Brooks later said they found a plastic bag containing heroin in the police vehicle they used to transport him for questioning at the Seventh Precinct.

Zimmerman later testified at a pretrial hearing that Jones admitted “trying to ditch the bag of narcotics and using street drugs,” the suit says.

“[Jones] was thereafter prosecuted based on the false claims,” wrote Klein, who did not respond to requests for additional comment this week.

The appellate court judges said in their ruling that Petrucci offered no testimony during a pretrial discovery hearing that showed police had probable cause to arrest Jones for loitering or that they had evidence he was at that location to use or possess drugs.

“Police officers cannot make an arrest in search of a crime; rather, probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed must exist before an arrest,” the judges wrote.

Federal claims made in the suit include violation of right to a fair trial, malicious prosecution, failure to intervene, and supervisory and municipal liability.

Suffolk County spokesperson Marykate Guilfoyle declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Noel DiGerolamo, president of the Suffolk County Police Benevolent Association, did not respond to requests for comment.

Jones, who was returned to prison in March to continue serving a sentence related to a separate conviction for drugs he possessed while in the county jail, is seeking punitive and compensatory damages to be determined by a jury, according to the complaint.

Jones has served more than 12½ years in state prisons since 2001 for three unrelated convictions on robbery and drug charges in Queens, the Bronx and Suffolk County, according to state prison records.

Jones' case is "not an isolated incident," Klein wrote in the suit.

"[Suffolk County] is aware from lawsuits, notices of claims, complaints filed with the SCPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau, or other [Suffolk] agencies, and extensive media coverage that many SCPD officers, including the defendants, engage in a practice of falsification," Klein said.

Newsday reported this week that police misconduct cases have cost Long Island taxpayers more than $165 million since 2000. On May 2, a federal jury found Suffolk County liable of $750,000 in the "malicious prosecution" of a Deer Park man who claims police beat him during a 2014 arrest.

Earlier this year, the county reached a settlement with Manhattan-based civil rights organization LatinoJustice over allegations of widespread discrimination against Latinos, which had also resulted in the U.S. Department of Justice monitoring of the police department under a consent decree since 2014.