NYPD cop sues to overturn 40 days of lost pay for wearing Trump patch on duty

An NYPD cop who was disciplined for wearing a “Trump Make Enforcement Great Again 2020” patch while on duty is asking a judge to overturn her punishment of 40 days of lost pay, claiming she didn’t get a fair internal trial, new court papers show.

Sgt. Dana Martillo was suspended for 10 days and docked 30 days of vacation after a video surfaced of her wearing the “politically oriented patch” while working a Black Lives Matter protest outside a police precinct in Fort Greene on Feb. 5, 2021.

The patch had the Marvel Comics character the Punisher symbol with former President Donald Trump’s signature hairstyle.

Martillo — who has been on the force since 2008 — also wore a second patch of the Punisher skull, which is popular with a far-right group called the Three Percenters.

At an administrative trial, Martillo was found guilty of all four charges she faced, including wearing unauthorized patches and expressing personal political beliefs on duty.

But Martillo accused the investigation against her of being “very biased and politically motivated” and claimed the charges and final determination at the trial were “completely bogus and premised upon false facts,” according to her Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed Tuesday.

The suit states Martillo never expected “the level of dishonesty, political bias, and bad faith that would so infect this entire administrative disciplinary process, due to the total control that the mayor as chief executive has over the New York City Police Department and the ‘Kangaroo court’ in which [she] was forced to mount her defense to these trumped-up charges (pardon the pun).”

Reasons listed in the filing for why the trial was unfair include that the judge who oversaw it was biased; the only witness against her allegedly lied; and she was unfairly barred from presenting evidence from a polygraph expert who would have testified about the truth of her testimony.

Martillo also claims that by wearing the patch, she wasn’t presenting views on a candidate or president but rather a civilian since Trump wasn’t in office, nor had he announced a bid for re-election at that point. The lawsuit includes a photo of Trump visiting the 17th Precinct around the time when he was a civilian.

She argues that her punishment was excessive and “so disproportionate to the offense as to be shocking to one’s sense of fairness,” the court papers say.

After the video of Martillo came out, then-Police Commissioner Dermot Shea tweeted, “Members of the NYPD must remain apolitical.”

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A spokesperson with the city Law Department and a spokesperson with the NYPD said they would review the case.

Additional reporting by Craig McCarthy