A city housing cop is on trial for the caught-on-video baton beating of a cuffed and cowering Army vet in a W. 93rd St. housing project hallway back in 2008.
But there was good news for the accused cop, Officer David London, as he sat at the defense table in a Manhattan Supreme Court room on the brink of jury selection — prosecutors still can’t locate his alleged victim, Walter Harvin, 30.
Harvin won’t be able to testify against London — unless he makes a surprise reappearance in the next week or so.
“Where he is is simply unknown,” said assistant district attorney David Drucker.
The prosecutor said his office has tried to contact Harvin directly and through his family by emailing, phoning, and door knocking.
“They have not heard from him for some time,” Drucker said. Meanwhile, it has been “many, many months” since the DA’s office’s last contact with him.
The trial is proceeding without him. Prosecutors plan to show jurors a chilling tape in which Harvin first gives the cop a shove while trying to get into a project elevator.
London allegedly reaches into the elevator, grabs Harvin, and begins beating and macing him.
He delivers some 20 baton blows and kicks to Harvin, a beating that continues even after Harvin is cuffed, prone and cowering.
At one point, London appears to stop to take a cell phone call, then resumes the beating.
“Most of the blows came while he was cuffed and down,” then-DA Robert Morgenthau had said in announcing London’s indictment on charges of felony assault and filing a false criminal complaint against Harvin.
“This is a very serious case, and a very serious abuse of police power,” Morgenthau had said.
Harvin is a combat vet from Iraq who was already suffering from post traumatic stress from his time on the battlefield, from which he had just returned two weeks before the beating.
London’s lawyer, Steve Worth, describes his client as a married father of three and a 15-year NYPD veteran with “an exemplary record–” despite a history of at least one excessive force complaint with the Civilian Complaint Review Board.