New York Post picked up on our exclusive story last week – without giving credit to Sheepshead Bites – noting that Palacios pleaded guilty in exchange for a sentence of four days in prison and his resignation from the NYPD. The paper learned that Palacios had to spend only a single night behind bars, though.
Palacios was imprisoned after the Thursday afternoon hearing, in which he admitted to filing a false police report that claimed Sheepshead Bay resident John Hockenjos attempted to run the officer over with his car. That four-day sentence meant that Palacios would have been a free man again on Sunday.
But the sweetheart deal for a man who nearly put an innocent man in jail for seven years got even sweeter for Palacios: state law requires that inmates scheduled for discharge on a weekend should be freed on Friday.
Palacios spent the night in jail, and was freed the next day.
Hockenjos is fuming over the short prison sentence, and afraid for his safety.
“He’s a free man to do whatever he wants,” Hockenjos told Sheepshead Bites last week. “And I have to be in pure fear that there could be retribution. I should not be in this position.”
Video that saved Hockenjos from heading to prison after being falsely accused by Palacios of attempting to run him down in his car.
Hockenjos in front of the courthouse. (Source: NYDailyNews.com)
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A cop who falsely claimed that a Sheepshead Bay man tried to run him down in a car was sentenced to four days in prison – only one day more than his victim was locked up based on the officer’s bogus charges.
Officer Diego Palacios pleaded guilty at a hearing on Thursday in Brooklyn Supreme Court in exchange for a sentence of four days and his resignation from the New York City Police Department, the District Attorney’s office told Sheepshead Bites.
The three-day sentence has Palacios’s victim, East 23rd Street resident John Hockenjos, furious – and afraid for his safety.
“This individual spends four days in prison, with no probation, and he gets out of jail today or tomorrow and he’s a free man to do whatever he wants,” Hockenjos told Sheepshead Bites. “And I have to be in pure fear that there could be retribution. I should not be in this position; there should at least be probation.”
Lea Shimunov, a 47-year-0ld Sheepshead Bay housewife, broke her teeth when she was scarfing down some peanut M&Ms, and is filing a suit against the monolithic Mars candy corporation in Brooklyn Supreme Court, according to a report in the New York Post.
After purchasing a medium-sized bag of peanut M&Ms at the Duane Reade located at 2931 Avenue U in December 2011, Shimunov allegedly bit into a “petrified peanut,” painfully shattering several teeth in the process.
“There was either a foreign object that was made into a M&M, or it may have been a petrified peanut,” lawyer Robert Berkowitz told the New York Post.
I thought M&Ms were supposed to melt in your mouth… not break your jaw.
