‘West End Fracas’ Case Draws Controversy

As court hearings continue in a case that has come to be known as the accusations and circumstances surrounding it have taken on a life of their own.

Longtime Long Beach resident Lucy Centeno has followed the case closely, attending court hearings and voicing her concerns at City Council meetings about the chaotic incident outside Minnesota’s, a restaurant/bar on West Beech Street on Jan. 22, when four men were arrested.

Centeno believes police officers used excessive force against at least one of the four men, Eduardo Natal, 26, of Long Beach, and that the Long Beach Police Department is covering up their actions. She bases her charges, in part, on a video she watched of the incident that involved a raucous group of about 50 people and police officers outside the bar at around 4 a.m. that Saturday, and on the numerous police officers — between 15 and 25 — who attended the subsequent court hearings.

“Let’s call it what it is,” Centano told the City Council at a meeting on April 15. “It’s a combined effort by the PBA to intimidate anyone that has anything to say about what happened, what they witnessed.”

Natal was arrested along with fellow Long Beach resident James Moriarity Jr., 26; Marlon Jones Guma, 24, of Freeport; and Scott Fowler, 23, of Stony Brook, all of who plead not guilty to misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and other minor charges.
 
All the defendants except Fowler appeared in City Court on Monday, when Nassau County Judge Robert Bogle rescheduled the case to May 16, as the defense continues to hand over more evidential materials to the court. City Court Judges Roy Tepper and Frank Dikranis recused themselves from the case that has received heightened attention.

Christopher Graziano, Natal’s attorney, said he expects there will be another hearing on May 16. “We’ll have a very good idea then of whether this case will go to trial,” he said after he gave the court medical records of his client on Monday.

Graziano contends that police used excessive force when they arrested Natal, who suffered injuries to his face, head and arm. Natal was treated at South Nassau Communities Hospital in Oceanside and Long Beach Medical Center, where he works as a security guard.

Graziano plans to give the Nassau County District Attorney a copy of the videos that he already submitted to the court. He declined to discuss details of the two separate videos that a bystander shot on his cell phone, but said they “show a lot of chaos." One video is about five minutes and shows incidents involving all four defendants, he said, and another 20-second video shows Natal after his arrest.

Long Beach Police have declined to comment on details about the incident, but have said that the officers did not use excessive force.

Meanwhile, Centeno told the City Council on April 15 that she called both the district attorney’s office and the state attorney general’s office about the numerous police officers who have appeared at the court proceedings, and said “they’re very perplexed as to why this is happening.”

“Intimidation by the Long Beach Police Department is only going to make it worse,” Centeno continued, “only because they have not been forthcoming in explaining what happened that night on their end.”

The prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Daniel Grusenmeyer, declined to comment on the case at this time, according to Chris Munzing, the D.A.'s deputy director of communications.  

Corey Klein, the city's corporation counsel, said that the city did not send any officers to the court for the hearings and that the police union has decided to take its own position.

“A position that as a labor union they have every right to take,” Klein told Centeno. “And in fact, their position as a union is something that the city cannot take any position … Those individuals going there are not going there — if you notice them as officers, they’re in street clothes, because they were not on duty, and in fact they were sent there as part of a union.”

Stefan Chernaski, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association of Long Beach, said in a statement sent to Patch that the police presence at the court hearings has been mischaracterized as a form of intimidation, a word he said implies an intent to frighten or make timid by use of threats.  

“On the contrary, members of the PBA have attended the proceedings to show support for their fellow officers who effectuated the arrests,” he said. “To the extent that certain individuals or factions may be seeking to misconstrue, sensationalize, or otherwise distort the actual facts of what transpired to advance their own various agendas, it is very important that these officers know that they will not be left alone or in the middle.”

Chernaski said that the officers who responded to the Jan. 22 incident faced a volatile, combative and potentially very dangerous gathering of individuals who ignored instructions to disperse, and that the officers restored peace.

“Contrary to the assertion that there is some sort of cover-up,” he noted, “the PBA welcomes informed and constructive discourse and believes that it is important that the community have faith that the members of the police department have acted and will continue to act with the utmost professionalism.”