No verdict reached in lawsuit filed by Brian Garcia, of Commack, against Suffolk police over being stopped and searched in 2016

A federal jury in Central Islip failed to reach a verdict Monday in a lawsuit filed by a Commack resident who said Suffolk police officers humiliated him and violated his constitutional rights when they strip-searched him on the shoulder of the Sunken Meadow Parkway in May 2016.

The eight-member jury — seven women and one man — got the case at 2 p.m. on Monday and are expected to resume deliberations on Tuesday morning. Jury selection began June 23.

In his closing argument in the trial of the lawsuit brought by Brian Garcia, 45, civil rights attorney Frederick K. Brewington said on Monday that Suffolk police stopped his client and searched him and his vehicle without his consent because he is Latino.

Brewington asked the jury to award Garcia $900,000 in compensatory damages and $750,000 in punitive damages. The punitive damages, Brewington said, are necessary to insure that Suffolk police don’t violate other residents’ rights in the future.

"They stopped him on the side of the road because of who he is, a Latino man," Brewington told the jury during 65-minute closing remarks delivered in U.S. Magistrate Judge Lee G. Dunst’s courtroom.

In closing remarks delivered Friday, Suffolk County attorney Stacy Skorupa argued that police did not know Garcia’s ethnicity when they stopped his vehicle. The officers pulled over Garcia, she said, because they believed he had engaged in a drug transaction.

Garcia gave the officers permission to search his body and his car, Skorupa told the jury on Friday. The officers found an open container of beer in the car and remnants of a marijuana cigarette, Skorupa said. They let Garcia go with a warning after he passed a sobriety test, she said.

"No good deed goes unpunished," Skorupa said. "These officers gave him a break and what did they get? A lawsuit."

The lawsuit alleges Suffolk police illegally stopped Garcia — the son of retired NYPD Det. Angel Garcia— on the evening of May 20, 2016, even though they acknowledged in testimony that they had not witnessed him commit any crime, Brewington said.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2018, went to trial in May 2024, ending with a hung jury. A second trial began June 23. The complaint originally named Suffolk County, the Suffolk County Police Department and Suffolk officers as defendants. The department was dismissed as a defendant in 2023, and the county was dismissed last year.

Garcia named officers David Young, David Ferrara, Det. Arthur Rall and Det. Timothy Zorn as defendants in the lawsuit filed in June 2018. Det. James Stapleton, originally named as a defendant, died in 2021. Ferrara was dismissed from the suit on June 5, according to court records.

Police stopped the vehicle Garcia was driving that night — a Nissan Pathfinder owned by his father — after spotting him at the East Northport home of an acquaintance who was under surveillance for allegedly dealing drugs, according to the complaint.

The officers made anti-Latino comments during the 45-minute stop on the busy highway and called him "MS Chico," according to the complaint, a reference to MS-13, the street gang linked to numerous murders and assaults on Long Island. They also suggested tattoos on Garcia’s hand indicated he was a gang member, the complaint said.

The officers forcibly removed Garcia’s belt, causing his pants to fall to his ankles, the lawsuit said. They stuck flashlights down his boxer shorts and shook his body to see if anything would fall out, it said.

Garcia filed a complaint with the Suffolk County Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau at the urging of his father, who had spent 30 years in law enforcement, according to Brewington. Brewington said Internal Affairs conducted a shoddy investigation that resulted in Young being disciplined because he did not fill out a form about Garcia’s alleged consent to search his vehicle.

"Accountability, for Mr. Garcia, was nonexistent," Brewington said.

On Friday, Skorupa told the jury that the sun was setting when Garcia stopped at the home of the target of a drug investigation, making it difficult for police who were watching the home to determine his ethnicity. There is no mention of race or ethnicity in radio transmissions related to the traffic stop, she said.

"They thought they saw a hand-to-hand drug transaction," Skorupa said.

But on Monday, Brewington told the jury that police did not have reasonable suspicion that Garcia had committed a crime, just "unreasonable speculation."

"They stripped him of his clothes and his dignity," Brewington said. "Mr. Garcia did nothing wrong. He was not engaged in criminal activity."