NYPD Strips Brooklyn Lieutenant of Badge, Gun Over Controversial Mailman Arrest

Pictured: Former NYPD Lt. Luis Machado. Image via civilian video released by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. (Full video below)

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — The lieutenant who oversaw the arrest of on-duty federal postal worker Glenn Grays in Crown Heights earlier this month has been stripped of his badge and gun and placed on modified duty, according to the NYPD.

Grays, 27, was arrested by four plainclothes officers while he was delivering packages on President Street on March 17.

A law-enforcement source said Friday that the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office is in touch with the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau regarding the arrest.

According to an account of the incident provided last week by Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, Grays was nearly struck by an unmarked police car carrying the officers as he got out of his postal truck.

Grays "made comments, as any New Yorker would do," the borough president said, after which the four officers got out of their vehicle, surrounded Grays — who was in his United States Postal Service (USPS) uniform and was holding a package — and arrested him after he declined to provide ID.

A bystander caught the arrest on tape.

DNAinfo's cops reporter, Murray Weiss, was informed by his police sources Friday that Machado is the officer wearing a backward hat in the video.

During the videotaped arrest, Grays appears to mention that his wife is an NYPD officer.

"Nah, nah, I don't want to talk to your wife," Machado responds, holding a cup of coffee and observing the scene from several feet away.

In the video, two other officers, reportedly under Machado's command, grip Grays' limbs, tell him he is resisting arrest and put him in handcuffs.

Then, Machado — still holding his coffee — places his left hand on the postal worker and appears to speak to him in a hushed voice.

As he walks away from the scene, Machado points to the pedestrian filming the incident and smiles.

Machado has been an NYPD officer for 11 years, according to DNAinfo.

And according to the New York Times: "Over the past six years at least three of the officers involved have been named in federal civil rights suits alleging false arrest, among other claims."

A February 2015 report in CrownHeights.info, a news blog covering the local Orthodox Jewish community, showed Lt. Machado receiving recognition from the NYPD for helping arrest a man suspected of robbing several residents at gunpoint and generally terrorizing the neighborhood.

During his alleged crime spree in Crown Heights and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, the suspect — 32-year-old Jovan Frederick — reportedly shot one of his victims, a 19-year-old woman, five times as she was retrieving her mail from the lobby of her building.

This week, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton told reporters that he had reviewed video of Grays' arrest, and was "not pleased" with what he saw.

Bratton said the four officers involved, all part of a specialized "conditions team," were not supposed to be out of uniform at the time.