Philly police officers hit with $1M civil judgment for 2019 Pride Parade assault
Tzvia Wexler said an officer choked her and later had her arrested on trumped-up charges during a dispute along the parade route. The city has vowed to appeal.
A federal jury on Tuesday awarded $1 million in damages to a nonprofit executive who said she was assaulted and then falsely arrested by a Philadelphia police officer during the city’s 2019 Pride Parade.
Tzvia Wexler, 61, of Center City, testified that she was merely passing by the parade route on Market Street on her way back from synagogue in June of that year when Officer Charmaine Hawkins ordered her to move out of the way.
Wexler tried to explain she was following instructions she’d received from another officer to cross at Market and Sixth Streets. She told jurors that Hawkins interrupted her, began choking her, and then later had her arrested.
Wexler spent 16 hours in police custody on felony charges of assaulting an officer — a case the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office later withdrew.
She sued Hawkins and Detective James Koenig, who handled the investigation that led to her criminal charges, and the city later that year on counts including assault, false arrest, malicious prosecution, and civil rights claims. The city later was removed from the case, but city lawyers represented the officers at trial.
Wexler, the national development director for Friends of Israel Disabled Veterans, declined to comment on the verdict when reached Wednesday. Her lawyer, Thomas B. Malone, thanked jurors for their decision.
“We asked this jury to send a message not only to these officers but to other police officers that this kind of conduct won’t be tolerated,” he said.
A spokesperson for the city vowed to challenge the verdict and the awarded damages on behalf of the two officers, calling them “unconstitutionally excessive.”
The jury’s decision came after a weeklong trial, in which Hawkins maintained she and Koenig had probable cause for the arrest.
She said she directed Wexler to move out of the way after a 6abc camera man had complained she was blocking his shot of the parade. The officer testified that she hadn’t attacked Wexler. Rather, she said, it was Wexler who had assaulted her, repeatedly shoving a bicycle into her.
But Malone credited evidence he presented at trial with casting doubt on that story.
Though Wexler took a photo of Hawkins on her phone that showed the officer wearing a body camera, Hawkins and Koenig later reported that there was no body camera footage of what happened.
Hawkins also denied Wexler’s assertions that she had reported trouble breathing and asked to be treated at a hospital afterward.
But body cam footage recovered from another officer at the scene showed Hawkins remarking that she had only planned to issue Wexler a ticket for obstructing the parade route until Wexler began telling others that she’d been injured and needed medical treatment, Malone said.
Koenig, the detective who investigated what happened, made no attempt to interview Wexler or photograph any injuries she might have received — a violation of Police Department directives for investigating incidents involving alleged assaults on officers.
He would later tell jurors that he believed Hawkins’ version of events.
The panel, however, discounted that testimony and awarded Wexler $500,000 in punitive damages from each of Hawkins and Koenig as well as $6,000 in compensatory damages for the expense of defending herself in the withdrawn criminal case.