Originally Posted by yesterday's ny times

2 Downed Cyclists, 2 Videos, 2 Officers, 2 Outcomes

A video of a New York City police officer shoving a bicyclist to the ground in Times Square became a viral presence on the Internet. A video of a similar encounter in Times Square, recorded about a year earlier, also found its way online.


A video from 2008, above, followed an officer as he pushed a cyclist.

The action in a 2007 video, top, is harder to decipher.

In each video, a bicyclist is sprawled on the ground; both videos seem to offer visual evidence contradicting police descriptions of the confrontations. The cyclists in the episodes, taking part in group rides called Critical Mass, eventually received settlements from the city.

But for the officers involved — one in July 2008, the other in March 2007 — the outcomes were vastly different.

Officer Patrick Pogan, who resigned from the force shortly after the clash on July 25, 2008, was convicted two weeks ago of a felony for lying about the confrontation in a criminal complaint.

Sgt. Timothy Horohoe did not face serious sanctions over what happened on March 30, 2007, even though a review board concluded that he had pushed a man from his bicycle. While the board found that Sergeant Horohoe had also lied about his role and was untruthful about other arrests he helped make that night, prosecutors did not bring charges against him. And he was allowed to keep his job.

The differing results in the cases of Mr. Pogan and Sergeant Horohoe may speak to the weight of sensational video evidence.

In Mr. Pogan’s case, the camera clearly captured him approaching the cyclist, Christopher Long, and lowering his shoulder as Mr. Long rode past. After impact, Mr. Long flew off his bicycle and landed on a subway grate.

Sergeant Horohoe, however, was out of the camera’s view until a split second before the cyclist, Richard Vazquez, went down, making it hard to tell what, if any, contact there was between the two men. The ensuing fracas, in which the police made several arrests, is also difficult to follow on the footage, which was recorded by cyclists that night. Sergeant Horohoe’s role in those arrests was at the center of the accusations against him.

Mr. Vazquez and four other people arrested that night sued the Police Department, claiming they had been harassed. The city settled for $98,000.

Wylie Stecklow, a lawyer who represented Mr. Vasquez and the four others arrested, noted the differences in the two videos.

“Pogan, it’s 15 seconds,” Mr. Stecklow said. “You see that boom; it’s not hard for anybody to look at that for 15 seconds and think they understand what happened. That’s why I think that took off and became viral. The Horohoe case, there’s a lot of nuance you have to understand.”

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Mr. Pogan, declined to comment on Sergeant Horohoe. But there are clear indications that a criminal case against the sergeant would have been difficult to execute.

For one, Sergeant Horohoe did not file any arrest reports or criminal complaints from that evening. Instead, he had subordinates file the reports, so there was no physical evidence that directly linked the sergeant to false statements.

After prosecutors declined to file charges, the Civilian Complaint Review Board determined that Sergeant Horohoe gave subordinate officers exaggerated or false information to put in the reports. But much of what the review board said the sergeant had lied about was in his interview with the board, after there was no longer a threat of criminal prosecution.

In a blunt 29-page report, the review board said Sergeant Horohoe had used inappropriate force against Mr. Vazquez and had tried to cover it up by lying to the board’s investigators.

The sergeant told the board that he saw Mr. Vazquez riding through a red light and ordered him to stop, according to the report.

Sergeant Horohoe said that when he put up his hands, Mr. Vazquez bicycled into his outstretched palms. The sergeant said he did not knock Mr. Vazquez off his bike; rather, he said, Mr. Vazquez dismounted on his own and tried to flee from the police.

“Given the available video footage,” the report said, “this account is rather absurd on its face.”

Sergeant Horohoe’s story, the report said, “suggests malicious intent on his part but also, and more importantly, demonstrates that he knew his actions to be improper under the circumstances.”

The review board also found that Sergeant Horohoe lied about parts of the arrest that night of another cyclist, Christian Gutierrez. Although the board could not determine whether the sergeant had probable cause to arrest Mr. Gutierrez, it wrote that he “not only exaggerated Mr. Gutierrez’s behavior, but he gave an account of the incident that was entirely contradicted by video evidence.”

Two officers under Sergeant Horohoe’s command told the board they had not observed events that they wrote about in their arrest reports and summonses and had relied on the sergeant’s account.

The Internal Affairs Bureau of the Police Department investigated the review board’s finding that Sergeant Horohoe had lied to them and found that he made no false statements, said Inspector Edward Mullen, a spokesman for the department.

Inspector Mullen said the bureau determined that the sergeant’s testimony was confused because questioning by the board’s investigators was inconsistent.


Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.


A version of this article appeared in print on May 13, 2010, on page A24 of the New York edition.