Donna Cipley, of Levittown, awarded $2M in suit alleging Nassau police falsely arrested her

A federal jury has awarded a Levittown woman $2 million after finding Nassau police officers falsely arrested her at her home in 2019, according to lawyers for the plaintiff and the defendants.

The verdict, reached in Central Islip on Friday, comes nearly six years after Donna Cipley said officers forcibly removed her from her house on March 12, 2019, wearing nothing but a pajama bottom and a tank top despite the cold. In a news release at the time, police said officers went to her home because she was wanted for criminal contempt and that she hit one officer with a door and bent back a detective's thumb.

She was charged with second-degree assault and resisting arrest. Those charges were later dropped, her attorney said.

“This is a long-awaited vindication of this grandmother’s rights," said Cipley's attorney, Frederick K. Brewington. "Finally, after attacking her in her own home, parading her before cameras in handcuffs and charging her with crimes she did not commit, she has seen just a small bit of justice.”

Oscar Michelen, the lead attorney for the county and the police officers, said the defendants had done nothing wrong and that the county would fight the verdict.

"We believe that the amount awarded for the false arrest was excessive, and that even the false arrest finding will eventually be overturned on appeal," he told Newsday.

Nassau County spokesman Chris Boyle did not respond to a request for comment Saturday.

Cipley, who was in her early 60s at the time of the arrest, claimed in her suit that Nassau officers had started harassing her family after her son, who had been hospitalized for a drug overdose in 2018, refused to become a police informant. She alleged that detectives visited her home, shining lights in the windows and ringing the doorbell.

She also said in her suit that "at no point" was she ever "the subject of a criminal contempt charge." 

After her charges were dismissed in October 2019, Cipley filed her civil rights lawsuit in 2020. She accused six officers of abuse, but Brewington and Michelen confirmed that the jury on Friday found only two officers, Det. Michael Mazzara and Det. Basil Gomez, liable.  

Cipley's original complaint accused the defendants of allegations including assault, battery, false arrest and malicious prosecution. The jury found the officers liable only for the false arrest, according to the attorneys.

In October, a federal jury in Brooklyn awarded more than $2.3 million dollars to Robert Besedin Sr., an Air Force veteran from Baldwin who alleged two Nassau County police officers threw him down concrete stairs during an encounter at his home in 2017.

Newsday previously reported that there were 75 settlements or jury awards for lawsuits alleging police or prosecutorial misconduct between 2000 and January 2023 on Long Island, costing taxpayers at least $165 million.