Early in the morning on August 9, 1997, police officers from the 70th precinct in Brooklyn, New York, were called to quell a disturbance at a nightclub in East Flatbush. Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was leaving the nightclub with relatives when the police officers arrived. During the melee that ensued, a black man punched a white officer, Justin Volpe, in the face. The slugger escaped, so, according to witnesses, the enraged Volpe grabbed Louima, the first black man he saw. Louima was arrested, handcuffed, and put into the back seat of a patrol car driven by officers Thomas Wiese and Charles Schwarz. Louima claims that while on the way to the police station, the officers—joined by Volpe and his partner Thomas Bruder—stopped the car twice to beat him with their police radios and nightsticks, all the while cursing him and shouting racial slurs at him...