Top NYPD brass should deliver a strong rebuke to four officers and a lieutenant who cuffed an on-duty postal worker last week because he shouted at them, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said Tuesday.
Glenn Grays, 27, of East New York, says he was driving along President St. in Crown Heights on March 17 when an unmarked police car nearly hit his mail truck.
Frustrated, the postal worker shouted something out of his window at the unmarked police car — which promptly stopped, backed up and disgorged four plainclothes cops and a lieutenant.
From that point on, Grays’ run-in with the plainclothes police was captured on cellphone video by bystanders, who can be heard repeatedly asking the officers why the mailman was stopped.
The postal worker was carrying a large brown cardboard box when police approached him.
“It is not a crime for someone to voice outrage after almost being struck by a vehicle … It is not a crime to state that you’re angry at someone who almost hit you. That is not a crime,” Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams stressed.
The video shows the cops asking him for identification, and Grays answers that it’s in his mail truck.
The cops then pull him away from the door — and the postal worker doesn’t resist.
He was cuffed and put in the back of the unmarked vehicle, which then drove away — leaving the postal van unattended.
“They place handcuffs on an on-duty postal employee delivering the U.S. mail. If they would do that to him in his postal uniform, they would do it to any person of color in that community,” Adams said Tuesday at a press conference, where he played the video.
Adams said the postal worker was brought to the 71st Precinct Stationhouse and issued a summons.
Glenn Grays, 27, of East New York, says he was driving along President St. in Crown Heights on March 17 when an unmarked police car nearly hit his mail truck.
“They issued him a summons in hopes of sweeping this under the rug,” said Adams, who wants Internal Affairs to investigate the four cops and the lieutenant.
“It is not a crime for someone to voice outrage after almost being struck by a vehicle … It is not a crime to state that you’re angry at someone who almost hit you. That is not a crime,” he stressed.
Adams said the postal worker had never had any run-ins with the law before and had a clean record.
“He is traumatized,” Adams said.
The NYPD on Tuesday said the incident was under review.
Adams also noted the NYPD could be in trouble for leaving the mail truck unattended.
Grays’ mother, Sonya Sapp, from Fort Greene, told reporters she started to cry when she saw her son — one of six — getting cuffed in the video.
“ I worry about all my boys, every day, every second of every day,” she said. “I’m just sorry that it happened and I don’t want it to happen to anyone Else’s son.”
Adams also noted the NYPD could be in trouble for leaving the mail truck unattended.
“I believe there were federal violations. Number one, leaving that truck unsecured. Number, two, interrupting the delivery of mail. There are clear NYPD procedures when you are arresting a federal employee,” he said. “We don’t know if even those basic procedures were followed.”
