Police officers cheering after making an arrest — a member of a group that monitors and takes videos of police says that is exactly what several officers did after they put him in handcuffs.
NY1 Criminal Justice Reporter Dean Meminger has been following this story and has the recording.
Jose LaSalle, an activist who records police, played for NY1 audio that he says he secretly recorded. You can hear parts of it in the video above.
It was of cheers, he said, from NYPD officers who were happy he was arrested.
"It was like I was El Chapo, or the reincarnation of Bin Laden or someone that is like America's most wanted, because their faces were really full of joy," LaSalle said.
LaSalle told NY1 that the incident happened in August, when he was arrested by Bronx officers as he videotaped them as a member of the Copwatch Patrol Unit.
He also was charged with supposedly possessing a police radio. Five months later, the Bronx district attorney dropped the charges.
LaSalle said he has now decided to release edited parts of his secret audio because he believes housing officers from Police Service Area 7 falsely arrested him and tried to get him convicted of a felony.
Recording:
Oh, Jose LaSalle! Oh sh#@!
Now for him, filming is a crime, right?
It's a party, it's a party, hey!"
"I am a former prosecutor, I was outraged," attorney Jeffrey Emdin said. "I couldn't even speak, to be honest with you, when I heard what was on this tape."
LaSalle said that after he was released, police arrested him a second time because they realized he may have secretly recorded them at the station house during his first arrest.
LaSalle said the secret audio recording catches officers acknowledging that he had kept his distance while videotaping them.
Another activist said the recording is proof that police officers mistreated LaSalle.
"It puts it now at the hands of the police commissioner. What are you going to do?" said Dennis Flores of the group El Grito de Sunset Park. "Are these cops going to continue to be cops?"
LaSalle and his followers said they want the Bronx district attorney's office to indict all of the officers involved.
"There was a crime committed, absolutely," Emdin said. "They filed a false criminal complaint, they signed it under the penalties of perjury. They've tampered with evidence."
Recording:
We can't find like a felony charge for this thing. It's only a misdemeanor.
The Bronx district attorney's office said it is investigating the police procedures and activities surrounding LaSalle's arrest.