Monday, August 4, 2014

This is who Al Sharpton's anti police friends are...

Chokehold witness arrested for gun: ‘Call Al Sharpton’

The man who videotaped a Staten Island cop using a deadly chokehold told his own wife to “call Al Sharpton” when he was busted on gun charges over the weekend, The Post has learned.
Ramsey Orta, 22, a convicted felon with a lengthy rap sheet, phoned his wife after his Saturday night arrest and instructed her to contact the activist minister — in an apparent bid to help get himself sprung, law-enforcement sources said.
“I got arrested. Call Al Sharpton right away!” Orta said, according to the sources.
Orta’s wife, Chrissy Ortiz, 30, confirmed to The Post that he asked her to call Sharpton. She said she reached out to Sharpton’s people, but wasn’t optimistic.
“Ramsey is basically f- -ked,” she said.
During a news conference Sunday, Sharpton said he hadn’t “heard from or talked to” Orta.
Orta whined to cops after his weapons bust, “You’re only mad because I filmed your boy’’ — referring to Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the undercover officer who put dad Eric Garner in the fatal chokehold on July 17.
The ME’s Office has ruled Garner’s death a homicide caused by neck and chest compression — and the Staten Island DA’s Office is now weighing whether to bring criminal charges against Pantaleo.
The cops who busted Orta had no idea he was the one who used his cellphone to record the fatal takedown until he told them, sources said. Orta then insisted he had asthma — an ailment Garner suffered from — and was taken to Richmond University Hospital.
Orta has 24 previous arrests including for rape, assault and robbery with a boxcutter, law-enforcement sources said.
He was busted Saturday when cops allegedly saw him stick a .25-caliber Norton semiautomatic pistol into the waistband of Alba Lekaj, 17, as they left the Hotel Richmond, sources said.
After spotting the cops, Orta allegedly told Lekaj, “Shut the f- -k up. Just take this,” and gave her the gun, reported stolen in Michigan in 2007, sources said.
Referring to Orta’s expected role as a key witness in the case against Pantaleo, one law-enforcement source sniffed, “Here’s their star witness, and he’s nothing but a criminal himself.”
Lekaj, who was allegedly caught carrying pot, confessed on video that she had bought drugs from Orta and that they went to the hotel to rent a room so they could get high together, sources said.
A counter clerk at the hotel said Orta “sort of just walked in and walked out” Saturday night.
“Maybe he saw police around, who knows?” said the clerk, Eugene Denoto, 64.
At Sunday’s press conference, Sharpton said Orta’s arrest “has no bearing at all” on his video of Garner being subdued by cops.
“The tape speaks for itself,” he said at his National Action Network headquarters in Harlem.
But he said the feds should now take over the probe into Garner’s death because Staten Island DA Dan Donovan “is faced now with whether he is going to prosecute someone he is also going to have to call as a witness.”
Neither Donovan’s office nor the Brooklyn US attorney returned calls for comment.
Orta was being treated in a psychiatric unit, sources said.
His wife said: “I knew something like this was going to happen. Ever since he took that video, the police have been targeting us, so I’ve told him over and over: ‘Keep your ass inside the house.’
“If I find out that it’s true that they came out of that hotel together, I’m gonna beat his ass.”
Lekaj couldn’t be reached for comment.

Ramsey Orta has been arrested 25 times, including:

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The gun that was recovered after Ramsey Orta’s arrestPhoto: DCPI
Aug. 2, 2014: Charged with gun possession after allegedly stuffing a .25-caliber pistol into the waistband of a teenage girl as cops approached them outside a Staten Island hotel.
May 4, 2014: Charged with robbery, menacing and weapon possession after cops say he brandished a boxcutter to steal $10 from a 28-year-old man on Staten Island.
June 15, 2013: Charged with gun possession and menacing after allegedly waving a handgun while threatening to kill a 25-year-old woman and her kids on Staten Island.
Aug. 3, 2012: Charged with assault after allegedly attacking a teenage girl on Staten Island.
Nov. 12, 2011: Charged with drug sale and possession for allegedly selling narcotics to an undercover cop on Staten Island.
Oct. 18, 2011: Charged with criminal possession of stolen property after cops
say he drove a stolen 2008 Hyundai Elantra on Staten Island; also charged with driving without a license and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
May 27, 2009: Charged with assaulting a 22-year-old man in the East Village.

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