NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York City police officer was charged with a federal hate crime after he allegedly used a racial slur to brag about the false arrest of an African-American man, according to court documents unsealed on Monday.
Michael Daragjati, who has been with the NYPD for eight years, was accused of stopping and frisking the man on Staten Island in April.
The man complained about the treatment after the search turned up no weapons or contraband, at which point Daragjati arrested him and filed a report falsely claiming the man had resisted arrest by flailing his arms and kicking, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Brooklyn.
Investigators from the FBI and the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau intercepted telephone calls in which they said Daragjati boasted about the arrest and made repeated derogatory references to African-Americans, telling a friend he had "fried another nigger."
In the calls, investigators quoted him as saying that it was too easy for police officers to get in trouble and that he had been "skating it for a long time."
Daragjati, 32, was arrested on Monday morning, and faces a maximum sentence of a year in jail and a $100,000 fine if convicted of the criminal civil rights violation.
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