Trial opens in lawsuit against SCPD over alleged strip search on highway shoulder

Suffolk County police officers humiliated a Commack man — and violated his constitutional rights — by strip-searching him while he was handcuffed on the shoulder of the Sunken Meadow Parkway during a May 2016 traffic stop, an attorney for the motorist said Monday in Central Islip federal court.

The officers also made anti-Latino comments during the 45-minute stop on the busy highway, falsely asserting that motorist Brian Garcia was a gang member and calling him “MS Chico,” civil rights attorney Fred Brewington said during his opening statement in the trial of a lawsuit that names four Suffolk police officers as defendants.

Suffolk police illegally stopped Garcia — the son of a retired NYPD detective — on the evening of May 20, 2016, despite no evidence that he had committed any crime, Brewington said. He gave his opening statement before the U.S. Magistrate Judge Lee G. Dunst and a jury of six women and one man selected earlier in the day.

“They treated him as if he had no right they were bound to respect,” Brewington said of Garcia.

According to the suit, police searched Garcia’s pockets, but found nothing illegal, then police used their flashlights to check his genitals and anus and shook his body to see if anything would fall out.

A lawyer representing the officers, however, challenged much of Brewington’s account of the nearly eight-year-old traffic stop, saying Garcia was given a roadside sobriety test, was never handcuffed, and he had given the officers consent to search him and his Pathfinder. 

Stacy Skorupa, of Suffolk County’s Department of Law, told the jury that Garcia had committed several traffic infractions before he was stopped. Officers found an open container of beer in Garcia’s Nissan Pathfinder, as well as the remnants of a marijuana cigarette. The vehicle smelled like marijuana, Skorupa told the jury.

The officers conducted the sobriety check and let Garcia go without issuing a summons after determining that he was not impaired, Skorupa said. Their lenience was repaid, she said, with a lawsuit.

“These are working people who were sued for just doing their jobs,” Skorupa said.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2018, names police officers David Young, David Ferrara, Det. Arthur Rall and Det. Timothy Zorn as defendants. Det. James Stapleton, originally named as a defendant, died in 2021, Skorupa said.

Representatives of the Suffolk County Police Department and the Suffolk Police Benevolent Association, which represents officers, declined to comment, saying they could not discuss pending litigation. Representatives for the Suffolk Detectives Association could not be reached for comment.

Garcia left his home in Commack between 8 and 8:30 p.m. on the night he was stopped, according to the lawsuit. He stopped at an acquaintance’s home in East Northport, unaware that Suffolk police were monitoring the home as part of a drug investigation, Brewington said.

After leaving East Northport, Garcia stopped at a convenience store to pick up beer, and was headed to a friend’s home in Babylon when he was pulled over on the Sunken Meadow by an unmarked car with a flashing light, according to the court papers. Two detectives — neither in uniform — approached Garcia’s car. He gave them his insurance, registration and PBA cards signed by his father and brother, who also works in law enforcement.

The detectives asked Garcia if had ever been arrested. When he told them he had a pending drug charge, they ordered him out of the car and searched him for contraband, finding nothing. The cops searched Garcia’s Pathfinder without his consent, the lawsuit said, also finding nothing.

The detectives handcuffed Garcia and two other cops arrived at the scene, according to the court papers. The police ordered Garcia to remove his shoes and socks, and removed his belt, causing his pants to fall to his ankles. Brewington said Garcia was wearing two pairs of pants because he had thin “chicken legs,” but Skorupa said it is not uncommon for drug dealers to wear two sets of pants.

Skorupa denied that Garcia's pants fell down to his ankles or that his shoes and socks were removed. He said police let Garcia go, despite the open container of beer and evidence that he had smoked marijuana in the car because they wished to return to East Northport and their drug investigation. They weren’t looking for the little fish, she said — they were looking for the shark, so they released Garcia without issuing a ticket.

“No good deed goes unpunished,” Skorupa said.