Federal suit: Niskayuna Police delayed medical care to teen with cracked skull

Michael Stevens, Niskayuna’s Deputy Chief of Police, who was conspicuously passed over for the department’s top job after Chief Dan McManus’s mysterious suspension last week, is named in a previously settled federal lawsuit as having ignored the urgent medical needs of a 16 year old petty larceny detainee with a cracked skull. 

Frenyea

The 16 year old, referred to as S.A.M. in case files due to their age at the time of the incident, suffered “severe and permanent” damage as a result of being slammed head-first into the pavement outside the Consaul Road Hannaford by an off-duty Schenectady patrolman who spotted S.A.M. leaving the store with beer, which the fleeing teen had already dropped prior to being caught by the pursuing plain-clothed, off-duty officer.

S.A.M. was subsequently placed into custody by Stevens and fellow Niskayuna patrolman Todd Frenyea, who later became president of Niskayuna's police union and is now a sergeant.  The two Niskayuna officers then transported the teen to the department’s station at Niskayuna Town Hall rather than Ellis Hospital, despite the 16 year old suffering from injuries severe enough that they ended up in intensive care for multiple days afterwards.

Stevens in 2018, photographed
by the Daily Gazette

The suit alleges that Stevens and Frenyea’s delaying of medical attention for the teen contributed to the severity of their injuries, a claim supported by the City of Schenectady in its own crossclaim against the Town of Niskayuna, Stevens, and Frenyea.

The claim, settled for $112,500 by the City of Schenectady prior to trial, would have been much costlier to Niskayuna taxpayers had the incident taken place after Governor Cuomo signed the Andrew Kearse Act this June.  The new law, passed overwhelmingly by the state legislature in response to the in-custody death of a Schenectady man, affirms that police have a duty to provide or obtain medical assistance for those in need of care who are under arrest, and provides a specific civil cause of action against officers and departments who fail to exercise due care.

Stevens is deeply connected in Republican politics through his brother, Scott, a senior Republican operative implicated by New York state investigators in a campaign finance scheme to improperly finance attack ads in “several senate races” during the 2012 general election.  As the Republican nominee for Town Board in 2007, Scott responded to then-Sergeant Fran Wall's sexual discrimination lawsuit by speaking in support of the police department as "all good people, all good cops."

Ignoring a teenage detainee's medical emergency seems like a decent hypothesis for why Stevens got passed up for Acting Chief while the Board tries to bring forward much needed reform in a post-George Floyd era...