The students had it coming, I’m sure:
wo Rutgers University students have filed a $2 million lawsuit against a New Jersey police department after they were allegedly beaten by officers in their apartment.
Kareem Najjar and Jake Kostman say they were asleep when officers from the New Brunswick Police Department stormed into their apartment in the basement of an off-campus house Dec. 10 and began beating the college students in their beds without any warning and without identifying themselves as police.
“We didn’t know they were cops,” Najjar, a 19-year-old sophomore, told AOL News today in a phone interview. “One was wearing a ski mask, one was wearing a Rutgers hoodie. Another had on a Jack Daniel’s T-shirt and work boots. I honestly thought we were getting robbed.”
The students say the officers — who were apparently serving a warrant for someone else in the house — punched and kicked them multiple times in the face, back and ribs.
Kostman, 20, said Najjar began to bleed from his ear after four officers held him to the ground, one pressing his head into the floor with a boot.
“Kareem is just in a ball on all fours, there are four cops on him and he’s bleeding from the head. At this point you just gotta hope and pray that they are cops,” Kostman told AOL News.
Najjar and Kostman say the officers only identified themselves after handcuffing them, but told the roommates they weren’t under arrest.
Then, the students say, they were forced upstairs in their underwear where they sat on a couch with other housemates near an open door. When they complained that they were cold and asked the officers for permission to put their clothes on or shut the door, Najjar and Kostman said the officers mocked them and even used homophobic and racist slurs.
Kareem sounds like a good terrorist name, though, so I’m sure this was all a misunderstanding.
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