An NYPD officer has been suspended without pay after a viral video captured him punching a 14-year-old girl in the head during an after-school fight on Staten Island — prompting a swift rebuke from Mayor Eric Adams on Wednesday.
During an unrelated appearance, Adams said he was “not pleased with what I saw on the video,” which was widely shared on social media.
The footage showed the cop — identified by sources as Nicholas Scalzo — pummeling the teen as he and another officer tried to break up a brawl that broke out near Edwin Markham Middle School at around 2:45 p.m. on Tuesday.
“I jumped in and the cops came and were supposed to be breaking it up, but the cops got into the fight,” the girl, Kyonna Robinson, told The Post on Wednesday from her Staten Island home.
“Then everyone was just in handcuffs and my sister [was] in handcuffs,” she said, “and I went up to my sister and asked the cops, ‘What are you doing?’ and he pushed me and then I hit him two times and then he hit me 11 times,” she said.
“I thought they would break up the fight. I didn’t think they would get into the fight.”
The officers were there on a foot post near Willowbrook Road and Forest Avenue and intervened in a fight between two girls, the NYPD said.
The video showed the ensuing melee — with the now-suspended cop seen unleashing a barrage of blows at the back of the girl’s head as other students tried in vain to pull the teen away.
“There was a fight between two girls. We tried to intervene and it looks like one of the girls tried to stop us from intervening,” an NYPD spokesman said.
“They tried to handcuff one of the girls,” the spokesman said. “And someone was pulling at them.”
Adams said the cops’ bodycams were now being reviewed as part of the internal probe into the incident.
“A young girl was being jumped by two other children and the police intervened. It was NYPD, not school safety agents, and so we are going to look at the body cam of the police officers,” he said.
“We’re going to use the video that was posted on Instagram. That’s when it first came to my attention, and of my understanding, the police commissioner swiftly suspended the officer that was involved.”
The two girls, 12 and 14, were arrested and later released without criminal charges as the probe continues, cops said.
“I got a knot on my head,” Kyonna said. “I still have migraines. I can feel where the knot on my head is without touching it.
“If you are going to have officers like police officers, you should know that they’re going to do the right thing, that they’re not going to beat up on a 14-year-old,” she said.
She said her kid sister, Kaila, had been trying to break up the schoolyard fisticuffs when the cops showed up.
“It’s upsetting,” the girls’ mother, Taneesha Robinson, said Wednesday. “I mean, it’s really upsetting to see a man hit a woman, but even more so to see a grown man hitting a 14-year-old girl and then just even more upsetting when that grown man is a police officer who’s supposed to be out there protecting women and children.
“It’s shocking,” she told The Post. “You don’t expect that.”
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau investigated, and the officer — who has not been publicly identified — was suspended without pay for up to 30 days, police sources said.
A police source said the 14-year-old hit the police officer first, but acknowledged that the amount of force against the pre-teen was extreme.
“If you watch the body-worn camera, it’s just complete mayhem,” the source said. “I guess the officer overreacted. She hits him first and then he responds by striking her more than once. That’s problematic.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch warned against a rush to judgment “based on a few seconds of video.”
“What is clear at this point is that these police officers were trying to break up a violent altercation when they themselves were assaulted,” Lynch said. “What is needed now is a thorough investigation of the entire circumstances, not just what has been posted online.”
Scalzo was previously injured during a scuffle between revelers and police on Mariners Harbor in August 2013, suffering a concussion and cut to the hand after he was kicked and knocked to the ground during the melee, the Staten Island Advance reported at the time.
He hung up on a Post reporter when reached by phone Wednesday.