Two NYPD cops who allegedly beat a Postal Service worker to a pulp for inadvertently giving directions to a notorious cop killer were indicted Wednesday on assault charges that could get each of them seven years in prison.
Detectives Angelo Pampena and Robert Carbone allegedly stalked and brutalized Karim Baker out a sense of revenge. On Dec. 20, 2014, he told killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley the way to the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn, near where Brinsley later shot Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu execution style in their squad car.
Baker was working as a Federal Express deliveryman at the time.
In addition to the criminal charges filed in Queens, a lawyer for Baker on Wednesday announced a $100 million suit against the NYPD.
“They owe this guy the moon and the stars for what they did to him,” attorney Eric Subin told The Post. “He had to switch jobs. He had to move. The NYPD hassled him for over a period of 10 months, just building up to this attack.”
Subin said the Oct. 21, 2015, assault began as his client was getting into his car in Corona. Pampena and Carbone drove up in their unmarked police car and boxed him in, then rushed to either side, prompting Baker to call 911, Subin said.
“You can see [the detectives] reaching in, trying to get the phone,” the attorney said of security footage. “It’s just bone-chilling.
“You can see the whole car shaking and rocking. They’ve got their legs up and are throwing punches,” Subin said. “Then they get him out of the car and are stomping on his head. He’s screaming bloody murder, asking, ‘Why for the love of God are you doing this!?’”
After allegedly beating Baker senseless, the detectives hit him with charges of resisting arrest, obstruction and parking too close to a fire hydrant.
Baker claimed that, prior to the beating, he had been stopped for minor traffic infractions about 20 times by cops who blamed him for his accidental role in the deaths of Ramos and Liu.
Baker was delivering a package in Bedford-Stuyvesant when Brinsley approached him and asked how to get to the Marcy Houses. Unaware of anything suspicious, Baker helped him out with directions.
Brinsley later sneaked up on Ramos and Liu as they sat in a marked NYPD cruiser and opened fire without warning, killing them both. The assassin then ran to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself to death as cops closed in.
Pampena, 31, and Carbone, 29, were arraigned in Queens court Wednesday on charges of assault and freed without bail.
Pampena also faces charges of second-degree perjury and first-degree offering a false statement.
Previously assigned to the NYPD’s Patrol Borough Queens North Gang Unit, the detectives have been stripped of their guns and badges and placed on modified duty.
