A New York City police sergeant who pleaded guilty to beating two handcuffed men in separate incidents was sentenced to probation Wednesday.
Sgt. Phillip Wong, a transit bureau supervisor who was placed on modified duty after his arrest last July, pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court to charges of assault and attempted assault, both misdemeanors.
Prosecutors asked that Wong be jailed for 60 days, but Judge Curtis Farber sentenced him to two years of probation and ordered him to perform 70 hours of community service.
Wong must also attend anger management or counseling, said Farber, who reasoned that Wong had “snapped” under the pressure of the job. The judge said the punishment was just and that Wong faces other consequences for his behavior, including the prospect of losing his job and pension.
“In this case, Sergeant Wong violated not only his oath – but the law – during the violent arrests of two New Yorkers, on two separate occasions,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said in a statement.
A message seeking comment was left with Wong’s lawyer.
Wong was caught on body and security cameras punching a 48-year-old man in the face in a Harlem holding cell in October 2019 after the man kicked the cell door and spat at officers, prosecutors said. The man required stitches for a cut above his right eye, prosecutors said.
Six months later, prosecutors said, Wong slugged a 35-year-old man in the side of the face, knelt on his back and bounced several times after the man kicked Wong and taunted him with anti-Asian slurs during an arrest at a Manhattan subway station. The man was taken to a hospital, but doctors didn’t find any physical injuries, prosecutors said.
As Wong knelt on the man’s back, the man shouted “I can’t breathe.” Wong responded, “I don’t give a (expletive) if you can breathe or not,” and then punched the man in the side of the face, prosecutors said.
The confrontation, a month before George Floyd’s death from a Minneapolis police officer behaving in a similar fashion for more than eight minutes, was also captured on multiple body and security cameras.
Wong has been with the department more than 15 years.
After Wong’s arrest, his lawyer Andrew Quinn told WCBS-TV that the sergeant was reacting in the April 2020 incident to the man’s anti-Asian vitriol.
“People in this city feel it’s perfectly in their jurisdiction and right to simply call a cop whatever they want, and they are right, First Amendment protects free speech,” Quinn said. “But at some point somebody has got to start to realize that cops are not getting paid enough to have racial and ethnic slurs hurled in their faces every single time they step out of a police car.”
