The NYPD cop whose bodycam video allegedly shows he lied about a young woman’s drunken-driving bust was accused of similar misconduct in a suit that the city wound up settling, The Post has learned.
Officer John Mascetti was also targeted in a police-brutality suit that led to another taxpayer-funded settlement, according to the city Law Department.
Mascetti, 35, is under investigation by the NYPD over a defense lawyer’s claim that he falsified the results of a breath test during an Aug. 8 traffic stop near the Empire State Building, The Post exclusively reported this week.
Bodycam video also shows Mascetti ogling 26-year-old Brooklyn yoga instructor Yael Glantz inside the Seventh Precinct stationhouse in lower Manhattan after her arrest, according to her lawyer, Mark Bederow.
In 2013, Mascetti was among three cops sued by a Queens man who claimed he was falsely arrested for drunk driving following a March 12, 2011, traffic stop near the intersection of West 143rd Street and Broadway in Hamilton Heights, court records show.
Antonio Diaz’s Manhattan Supreme Court suit said that he took breath tests at the scene and at a highway patrol precinct and registered 0.00 percent each time.
But the cops “falsely wrote in their police reports that [he] had refused to take any of the six breathalyzer tests,” according to his suit.
Diaz was locked up in Manhattan Central Booking for more than 27 hours waiting for his arraignment, then returned to court four times before the District Attorney’s Office dismissed all charges.
His suit alleged that NYPD cops engaged in a “policy, practice or custom” in which they “arrest every motor vehicle driver they suspect of being intoxicated, despite the fact that the driver took a Breathalyzer test that showed his or her blood alcohol content was under the legal limit.”
Diaz settled his suit in 2017 for $42,500, according to the Law Department.
Mascetti was also sued in 2013 by a Manhattan man who claimed he was badly beaten by cops and dragged in handcuffs to the 30th Precinct station house in Harlem on Dec. 27, 2012.
Jesus Garcia, who was busted for allegedly shortchanging a cabbie, later testified at a deposition that he suffered a broken arm and needed surgery for injuries to six discs in his neck, according to court records.
Mascetti was the only cop named in Garcia’s Manhattan Supreme Court suit.
The cop testified during a 2016 deposition that he had no recollection of the alleged incident.
The city settled with Garcia for $1.125 million in December, according to the Law Department.
“While not an admission of wrongdoing by officers, these settlements were in the best interest of the city,” Law Department spokesman Nick Paolucci said.
An NYPD spokeswoman, Sgt. Jessica McRorie, also said, “The past settlements did not involve admissions of guilt by any officers.”
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