The police department “handled improperly” an early tip to its Internal Affairs investigators that a Haitian immigrant was brutalized in a Brooklyn station house, Police Commissioner Howard Safir has acknowledged.
In a three-sentence statement late Friday, the commissioner said that a telephone call about the victim, Abner Louima, was received on the evening of Aug. 9, the same day prosecutors say Louima was beaten and tortured inside Brooklyn’s 70th Precinct station house.
Four police officers face charges in the incident.
Until now, the police have said their first notification was a call from the family to the Internal Affairs Bureau at 3:55 p.m. the following day, 36 hours after prosecutors say the man was beaten and brutalized with the handle of a toilet plunger.
A Louima family attorney asserted Thursday that a nurse at Coney Island Hospital had called Internal Affairs between 9 and 10 p.m. Saturday but that police did not begin their investigation until late the following day.
In its statement Friday, the police department said the chief of Internal Affairs, Charles Campisi, had determined Friday while reviewing tapes of incoming phone calls that a tip had indeed been received on the evening of Aug. 9.
The commissioner’s statement said Campisi is “investigating the response” to the original phone call.
