Most store owners interviewed for this report said that when the plainclothes cops barged through their doors, they believed they were being robbed at gunpoint.
Sirilo Ortiz said that on the evening of Nov. 1, 2007, he had emerged from the basement of Lycomings Grocery in Hunting Park to see a gun barrel pointed at his face.
After Cujdik and his squad members burst into the store, they cut the wires to the surveillance camera with wire cutters, he said, then looted the store.
Ortiz, 39, who came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic in 1996, had owned the store just five days.
One cop took a Black & Mild, a slender cigar, from the shelf and started to smoke, said Ortiz, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter.
The officers took three brown boxes from his kitchen and loaded them with food, he said.
"It was like they was shopping," said Maria Espinal, who was working in the kitchen and saw the cops take boxes stuffed with packaged goods.
The cops put a gun to Espinal's head, too, she said, before identifying themselves as police. "I thought I was going to die," she said.
Ortiz said he had about $500 in his pocket and $700 in the cash register. But the police recorded taking a total of only $918 on property receipts.
Ortiz said he took a plea deal and served six months' probation and 25 hours of community service for selling the tiny plastic bags.
He was so depressed and anxious, he lost 25 pounds and could no longer work in the store, he said.
"I couldn't take it no more," said Ortiz. "Every time someone opened the door, I thought something bad would happen."
He gave the store to his brother and now drives a cab.
"Cops are supposed to take care of people and do the right thing," Ortiz said. "I don't trust them anymore. You're supposed to trust the police, but they're the ones you can't trust.
"They weren't supposed to be the ones."
