Four years before Connecticut cops took a handcuffed Black man for a “rough ride” in the back of a police van — leaving him paralyzed for life — one of those cops was involved in another abusive incident against a different Black man.
That man, 29-year-old Kijana Cornelius, was just awarded $522,000 by a federal jury over a 2018 incident in which several New Haven cops body-slammed him to the ground inside a police station even though he had done nothing to provoke such a violent response.
One of those cops, Ronald Pressley, was also among several officers involved in the 2022 Randy Cox incident, where the Black man was arrested on a weapons charge, then placed in the back of a police van unrestrained and handcuffed.
The driver of the van slammed on the brakes, sending the handcuffed Cox headfirst into the metal partition inside the vehicle.
The cops then mocked him, accused him of lying when he told them he was unable to move, and dragged him to a jail cell instead of seeking medical attention.
Cox accepted a $45 million settlement in 2023, and last year Pressley — who retired in 2023 to avoid being terminated — received a six-month suspended sentence after taking a plea deal, never spending a day in jail. He also had to pay a $15 fine.
But had Pressley been terminated over the Cornelius incident, Cox may still be walking today, said Connecticut attorney Alex Taubes, who represented Cornelius, in a statement to Atlanta Black Star.
The New Haven Police Department’s detention center is where Cornelius was body-slammed to the floor in 2018 for asking for his mother. It is the same detention center where Cox was dragged into a cell after his neck was broken in 2022.
One of the officers a federal jury found liable on Thursday — Pressley — was there for both. The department’s Internal Affairs division cleared him after the Cornelius incident.
If Internal Affairs had held Pressley accountable in 2019 instead of clearing him, maybe he would not have had a badge in 2022.
Randy Cox might have been treated like a human being with a broken neck instead of a problem to be dragged into a cell. We will never know.
Watch surveillance video of the Cornelius incident below.
‘Severe, Painful and Permanent Injuries’
Cornelius was a 21-year-old college student when he was arrested for misdemeanor breach of peace on April 22, 2018, following an altercation with another man at a diner.
Surveillance video shows Cornelius inside police headquarters, surrounded by several officers with both hands against a wall, as New Haven police officer Clayton Howze frisks him.
The video does not contain sound, but the lawsuit filed in 2020 states that New Haven police officer Nikki Curry told Cornelius to “shut up.”
The video then shows Cornelius lifting his right hand off the wall and gesturing toward Curry, but not in a profane or aggressive manner.
Curry responds by grabbing his wrist, and Howze and Pressley join in by grabbing Cornelius and slamming him to the floor.
“While lying prone with his face to the floor, his hands cuffed behind his back and surrounded by the defendants, the plaintiff, Kijana Cornelius, was lifted from the floor by the handcuffs, causing him to suffer further injury,” the lawsuit states.
Cornelius ended up with “severe, painful and permanent injuries consisting of a shock to his nervous system, a displaced scaphoid waist fracture of the right wrist, facial abrasions, abrasion to the left nasal bridge, abrasion to the left scalp,” the claim states.
The misdemeanor charge against Cornelius was eventually dismissed.
The initial lawsuit named five cops as defendants, but as the case progressed, three of the officers were dismissed from the claim, leaving only Pressley and Curry as defendants.
On Thursday, the federal jury held them both liable, but state law requires the municipality to pay the damages incurred while employees are acting within the scope of their jobs, Taubes explained.
However, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker told the New Haven Register the city may appeal the verdict.
“I watched the video when we were evaluating the case a while back, and it was quite clear to me that the officers followed policy and didn’t do anything wrong,” Elicker said.
But the federal jury, which had no personal interests in the case, obviously had a different opinion.
“The video speaks for itself,” Taubes said on his Facebook page in response to the mayor’s statement.
Watch the Randy Cox video below to see how he ended up paralyzed.
