New York Daily NewsStaten Island cops stormed a barbershop and brutalized one of its owners during an undercover operation involving a stolen cellphone — and now the battered merchant is accusing the cops of iTrapment.
EZ Does It Barber Shop owner Michael Pacheco, 25, is still nursing the hemorrhaged eyeball he suffered when cops allegedly slammed a police radio into the side of his head as they piled on top of him during the Friday sting.
“Fortunately, I’m not asthmatic,” said Pacheco, referring to Eric Garner, the Staten Island father of six who died over the summer after police put him in a chokehold. “If I had asthma or high blood pressure like Eric did, I could have died. But now I have to go home to my infant son and try not to scare him with this bloody eye.”
Pacheco, his brother Stephen Cummings, 29, and his father, Michael Sr., 47, were all inside their six-week-old Mariners Harbor business at about 2 p.m. when a police informant came in claiming he had an iPhone 5, still in the box, for sale.
No one offered to buy the phone, said the elder Pacheco, a disabled retired city employee.
The son went outside with the seller, but came back in to show his dad the phone again.
That was his undoing.
As they gave the phone a second look, another man — who turned out to be a plainclothes cop — came in, claiming that the phone was stolen.
After an argument, the man identified himself as a cop and cuffed the younger Pacheco.
MARY DIBIASE BLAICH FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS(Left to right) Owners Michael, Mike and Stephen Pacheco in their Staten Island barbershop on Tuesday.During a heated exchange caught on video exclusively obtained by the Daily News, more than a dozen cops came into the barber shop. They threw the new dad onto the floor and pounced, leaving him bruised and bloody.
Police said Pacheco was charged with resisting arrest, criminal possession of stolen property and disorderly conduct. Cummings was arrested on the same charges.
But after a night in jail, they were released — Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan declined to prosecute. A DA spokesman confirmed that the charges were dropped, but would not elaborate further.
Pacheco’s father received a summons for disorderly conduct.
MARY DIBIASE BLAICH FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWSMichael Pacheco, 25, suffered facial injuries from the beating he allegedly received from cops in the stolen iPhone operation.The Pachecos got corralled in an NYPD initiative known as Operation Take Back, in which undercover cops or police informants go into stores trying to sell stolen iPhones and iPads. When someone bites, cops swarm in, charging them with possession of stolen property.
Many have criticized the tactic, claiming that the informants don’t tell their targets that the phones are stolen — a prerequisite for the arrest.
“It can be entrapment if they don’t give all of the facts,” said Manhattan attorney Matthew Galluzzo, who has successfully sued the city for falsely arresting someone in the stolen-iPhone sting. “My problem with it is that cops are re-creating a crime where there wasn’t one. They’re inducing someone to commit a crime.”
The NYPD didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.