Buffalo officer Kevin Murphy fired when he pepper sprayed and arrested Lakisha Neal
By: [Old Story]
Bufflo, NY - The Buffalo police union is asking a judge to overturn an arbitrator’s decision upholding termination of an officer who doused a woman with pepper spray and repeatedly swore at her.
It’s rare litigation. Erie County Supreme Court documents dating to 2013 show no other cases of either the city or the police union asking a judge to reverse an arbitrator’s decision on whether an officer should be fired.
Lakisha Neal, 42, filed an internal affairs complaint seven months after Officer Kevin Murphy arrested her on March 25, 2020. Body camera footage shows Murphy grabbing Neal, cursing and twice spraying her with pepper spray while other officers do nothing to intervene other than telling Neal to cooperate.
“Get in the car or get sprayed!” Murphy demands after grabbing Neal by the arm and forcing her to a patrol car. Murphy deploys pepper spray after Neal says she’s pregnant.
“Will y’all listen to me?” Neal asks seconds before Murphy sprays her. As tears from the first spraying run down Neal’s face, Murphy sprays again after Neal tells him that she can’t breathe.
Body cam footage captures Murphy dropping at least five f-bombs, with the first one coming 10 seconds after he arrived and pulled Neal from a porch.
“Shut the fuck up!” Murphy shouted, cutting Neal off in mid-sentence.
The video footage was shot by Murphy’s body cam. It was introduced as an exhibit by the city as part of the lawsuit.
Neal was arrested and charged with making a false report, obstruction, reckless endangerment and resisting arrest. Those charges were dismissed in court.
An arbitrator last fall upheld the department’s firing of Murphy for excessive force and falsely stating that Neal had admitted telling a dispatcher that a gun was at the address.
“(Murphy) did not allow himself a second to assess the situation and determine what Neal’s role in it might have been,” arbitrator Jeffrey Selchick wrote in his October decision. “Instead, (Murphy) jumped to conclusions and immediately decided that Neal was a suspect, never considering she may have just been an innocent party in the situation.”
The Buffalo Police Benevolent Association is asking a judge to overturn the arbitration decision reached after Murphy collected more than $276,000 in salary from the city while his disciplinary case was pending.
Murphy, who joined the force in 2015, suspected Neal of falsely telling a dispatcher that there was a gun at the scene, according to court filings. A man was the 911 caller, according to dispatch records the city introduced during arbitration, and had reported a woman was at the Dartmouth Avenue house threatening someone with a gun. The dispatcher alerted officers that the gun report was false before Murphy arrived, the city told the arbitrator.