“Suddenly and without warning,” Riley Ross, a lawyer for Ms. Young, said at a news conference in September, “a pack of Philadelphia police officers wearing riot gear and wielding batons descended on the car, smashing multiple windows of the vehicle. The officers then violently yanked Ms. Young and her nephew from the vehicle and physically beat her, and him, in the street, causing significant injuries.”
According to a statement from the district attorney, Mr. Kardos is accused of pulling Ms. Young out of her sport utility vehicle by her hair, “after which she was struck by fists, batons and a number of unknown objects.” Ms. Young was never charged.
After an internal affairs investigation, two officers — including Mr. Kardos — were fired and 14 were awaiting disciplinary proceedings through the department’s Police Board of Inquiry, a city spokesman said in September. The Philadelphia police did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
Appearing at a news conference via Zoom on Thursday, Ms. Young said that she now gets nervous and scared every time there’s a police officer in a car behind her. She had a message for Mr. Kardos: “You could have talked to me. I’m very easy to talk to. What you did to me, what you did to me in front of my son, was not acceptable.”
“I don’t wish this on my worst enemy,” she added. “Dealing with this has so far been one of the hardest things I had to do in life.”
A lawyer for Ms. Young, Thomas Fitzpatrick, said that the charges were “a step in the right direction” and added that a civil lawsuit against the Fraternal Order of Police was still pending.
Ms. Young’s lawyers in September filed the case in Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas against the national group for a since-deleted social media post it made that stated the child was “wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness.” The post, which showed an officer hugging the child, stated, “The only thing this Philadelphia Police Officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child.”