US, New Jersey - Bayonne city officials are keeping mum about the lawsuit filed by a 33rd Street resident who says he was brutally beaten by cops for no reason and a city official disputed an online report saying there is an internal investigation into the matter.

"It's a pending litigation and I can't comment," Public Safety Director Jason O'Donnell said Friday about the lawsuit filed by 35-year-old Jason Rios. "If I did I'd be breaking the law."
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A still grab from the video showing a Bayonne police officer pepper-spraying Jason Rios' face.
Rios filed a federal lawsuit last month saying that police came to his house on Aug. 29, 2010 after he called 911 to report that his car was on fire.

A video of obtained by The Jersey Journal of some of what transpired shows a verbal exchange between Rios and police officers after the flames had been extinguished.

It shows Rios walking away from the cops when an officer follows him and appears to spray him in the back of the head with what the lawsuit says was pepper spray.

The video then shows the 35-year-old turning and pointing at the officer, and the officer grabbing Rios' wrist and spraying him in the face.

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Bayonne firefighters work to extinguish the fire burning Jason Rios' car which was parked behind his 33rd Street home on Aug, 29, 2010.
Two other officers help bring Rios to the ground and handcuff him with no visible sign of resistance.

The video shows Rios being frisked at the open door of a police car when he turns, says something to the officers, and is yanked by the arm and placed on the pavement, out of view of the camera.

In the lawsuit, Rios' lawyer, Joel Silberman of Jersey City, alleges Rios' face struck the pavement and the officers "savagely assaulted him until he lost consciousness."

The Rios case was featured in a front-page story in The Jersey Journal on Thursday.

O'Dnonnell disputed a Hudson Reporter story that ran online that said he said there is an "internal investigation" into the incident.

"No, not true," O'Donnell said about the Reporter story.

O'Donnell did not say if he had seen the video or if he believes an investigation is warranted.

The defendants named in the federal lawsuit filed on July 30, 2012 are the city of Bayonne, the Police Department, former Chief Robert Kubert, Lt. Robert Deczynski, Sgt. Franco Amato, and officers James Mahoney, Joseph Saroshinsky and Roman Popowski.

Popowski was named in at least three separate complaints between 2006 and 2009, lawyers representing plaintiffs in a previous incident said. Information on previous complaints was not available through the Bayonne Law Department.

The lawsuit asks for punitive damages and lawyers' fees, but does not specify an amount.
The officers could not be contacted through the Police Department and there was no answer at the Bayonne PBA.

Source: The Jersey Journal
Journal staff writer Michaelangelo Conte contributed to this story.