A jury was selected yesterday in the trial of the police officers accused of attacking and sodomizing Michael Mineo in fall 2008. The Daily News calls the trial “sensational,” but The Times is surprised by how comparatively little attention it’s getting, and says it’s off to a “quiet start.”
The Post, for its part, is all over police brutality stories today. They report that the New York Civil Liberties Union has sued the city for school safety officers for roughing up students, and that a Bronx cop has been suspended after a violent attack was caught on tape:
The graphic video also shows a second cop punching the helpless man on Jan. 5 — as two NYPD sergeants nearby do nothing to stop the assault, law-enforcement sources said last night.
“It wasn’t as bad as Rodney King,” said one source, while admitting the attack was vicious.
In the grammarian-stripper prostitution trial, the defense continues to seem shrewder than their opponents. The prosecution preempively declared yesterday that the defendents had better not try to claim they are lesbians. Reports the Daily News:
“One of their defenses may be that they’re lesbians,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Daryl Reed said in court Wednesday. “We should be allowed to call her so-called fiancé to rebut her.”
In rich-person crime, the Daily News reports that Metropolitan Opera philanthropist Alberto Vilar, who swindled investors out of $40 million, has asked for leniency on the grounds of age and ill health.
“At age 69, I have little to look forward to,” he wrote to the judge who will sentence him February 5th. “I ask your honor to grant me time outside of prison during the few years left to me.”
Vilar faces up to 22 years in jail. In 22 years he will be 91.
