The city has agreed to pay a city man $47,500 to settle his federal civil rights lawsuit alleging that a Worcester police officer unjustly beat him with a baton while he was defenseless on the ground, breaking his wrist and inflicting multiple bruises. The police brutality lawsuit, brought in U.S. District Court by Trung Huynh, sought unspecified damages for illegal arrest and excessive force stemming from an incident outside Club Red on Pleasant Street in June 2006. 

Mr. Huynh alleged that after one of his friends mouthed off to officers outside the club, Officers Andrew Cravedi and William Mosley, who were working a paid detail for the bar, chased them down. Mr. Huynh alleged that one of the officers struck him repeatedly with a baton and that the beating continued even after he was on the ground with his hands behind his head. “It was an egregious case because it involved the use of a weapon that resulted in significant injury, a broken bone,” said Mr. Huynh’s lawyer, Michael L. Tumposky of the Boston firm Hedges & Tumposky. “I think it reflected poor judgment on the part of the officers involved and poor training.” 

Last year, the city settled at least three police brutality lawsuits at a total cost of $107,750 in taxpayer money, according to city records. The city paid $320,000 in public money to settle five police brutality lawsuits in 2008. 

 

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