$55M suit filed in case of man who died in police custody

The Suffolk County district attorney's office and police department "rashly and unfairly" exonerated the police officers who beat Kenny Lazo with flashlights before he died, said a lawsuit filed Thursday by the Bay Shore man's family.

The suit demands $55 million.

Prosecutors waited an unreasonably long time -- seven months -- to present the circumstances of Lazo's April 12 death to a grand jury, the lawsuit said. By the time the case was presented, Suffolk police commissioner Richard Dormer had already declared the officers innocent in a memo leaked to the press, said the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Central Islip.

"The case was dismissed and disregarded by Suffolk County as though [Lazo's] life had less worth than someone else's," said Lazo's family's attorney, Frederick K. Brewington, at a news conference Thursday.

Lazo died on April 12 about an hour after being pulled over on the side of the Robert Moses Causeway. A police investigation found that Lazo was beaten with flashlights after he fled officers, was tackled and reached for and touched an officer's gun. He was taken to the Third Precinct in Bay Shore, where he lost consciousness. He died later at Southside Hospital.

Dormer and prosecutors said appropriate force was used to subdue Lazo, whom they described as a drug dealer who weighed 238 pounds, but the lawsuit tells a different story.

It says the officers used excessive force and had no probable cause to stop Lazo. It said Lazo did nothing to provoke the officers. It also described Lazo's injuries in detail for the first time: deep bruises to the back of the skull, under his left eye and to his left ear and a bloody hematoma on the right side of his forehead.

A county spokesman did not immediately return a call Thursday afternoon.