Incident

Incident Description

On January 2, 1992 Frank A Nelson, a Black man, was arrested on the same charge for which he had been released approximately 6 hours earlier. Upon his arrival at 40 Delaware Avenue, he was bailed out and released. He was told to pick up his property at 74 Franklin Street. A woman desk officer told him after asking him if he was Frank Nelson, that he had to pick up his property in a back room which she directed him to. On entering the room he spent the next three hours being beaten while handcuffed.

The officers took turns beating up Nelson, and bragged about being able to make him bark like a dog as they punched and kicked him to the floor.

He told them that they made a mistake and that he was released from across the street but they said he thought he was "tough." They moved toward him, calling him racial slurs, and continued to beat him. He attempted to make a break for the door which was slammed shut but was placed in a head-lock, and thrown to the floor on his stomach.

While lying in his hospital bed with a spinal injury, unable to move his legs, Nelson gave an account of how he was beaten with sticks, kicked, choked, and stomped, while handcuffed behind his back, lying on his stomach:

"A white shirt walked in, I looked him right in the face.

'Cover his face, I don't want him to see me. You know what to do,' he screamed.

A cloth was placed over my face. I could feel the barrel of a gun being pushed into my eyeballs;

'Do you like that, n****r?’

At one point, one of them stood on my back and pulled my handcuffed arms up to my head," recounted Nelson.

"They said they were going to kill me like they did somebody named King; I don't remember the first name, but I had no reason to doubt them."

Still handcuffed, Nelson was dragged to an elevator where he was kicked in the throat.

"I tried to get up so they would not kick me in the throat, that's when I realized I couldn't feel my legs."

When the Pre-Trial Services people arrived at about 8:30 a.m., Nelson was lying on the concrete floor in a pool of blood, still handcuffed behind his back, unable to move.

"When I saw the White man. I knew they were back to kill me, but when he identified himself from Pre-Trial, I begged him not to leave me. When he got a closer look, he said, ‘Oh my God.’ He called an ambulance and stayed with me."

Mr. Nelson recalled with tears streaming down his disfigured face, "I owe him my life.”

Because the police have threatened to arrest him in the hospital, unless he signed papers, Nelson said he fears for his life. At one point because of police presence, the hospital had to call headquarters to find out if Nelson was under arrest so that they could move him to the hospital lock-up if such was the case. No one seemed to know if he was under arrest.

Franklin Pratcher, attorney for the family, said that members of the National Bar Association and private sector got together and intended to start bringing cases against this type of brutality.

"Some officers are frustrated with so much crime on the street but others are just prejudiced. They do not see Black people as human beings and don't treat us the same as White people." He went on to say that the big problem is the lack of community out-cry as well as a lack of outrage from the legal community itself.

Frank Nelson was the friend who took in Yolanda Mitchell, who was paralyzed in the July 1992 shooting on Carlton St. in the Children’s Park. He was her sole helper. While still in a wheelchair, she was largely unable to do for herself. Following the beating by Buffalo police, Mr. Nelson occupied a room on the same floor facing the same fate.