Hector and Piedad Munoz were beaten by cops responding to his scuffle with a police officer over an open container. From [HERE] and [MORE]  The city will pay a staggering $1.6 million to settle two lawsuits against cops accused of beating up two men in unrelated busts for public beer drinking.

In both cases, the plaintiffs denied they had open containers of beer. And both criminal cases against the men were eventually dismissed. And in both cases, the men claim they were brutalized by the NYPD. “These are two horrible examples of the excessive use of force by police, which remains a serious problem (in) New York,” said lawyer Sanford Rubenstein.

Hector Munoz was watching a soccer game in his East New York, Brooklyn, apartment with his family on Dec. 19, 2007, when he dashed to the bodega on the corner to buy a can of beer at halftime.

As he was approaching his apartment building a man wearing a hoodie bolted from a car in his direction. Munoz ran because he thought he was about to be attacked—and he was, by undercover officer Christopher Esposito, who testified that he was wearing his badge around his neck when he ran toward Munoz. Munoz, his wife Piedad, and daughter Jacqueline claim they were beaten by cops responding to the suddenly escalating incident, and their apartment was ransacked in the process.