[FROM WRITTEN ON THE CITY, WHICH WAS JUST PUBLISHED]

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9/15/83, 2:50 A.M. – 25 year-old Brooklyn artist and model Michael Stewart is arrested by transit police for scrawling graffiti with felt markers in a subway station at First Avenue and 14th Street. He is hogtied, then repeatedly kicked and beaten by a total of 11 police officers.

9/15/83, 3:10 A.M. – Michael Stewart is taken in a police car to the District 4 transit police headquarters in Union Square Park. A witness there later testifies that she “heard the voice of a male, and he was yelling, ‘What did I do? What did I do?’… One of the officers was kicking the man, and the other officers were hitting the man…The man was yelling, ‘Oh, my God, someone help me, someone help me.’ ” Soon after that, she says, the man was picked up, limp and silent, and ”thrown into a van,” which then drove off.

9/15/83, 3:22 A.M., Michael Stewart enters Bellevue Hospital Center, bound and unconscious. A nurse notes that he has turned blue and stopped breathing.

9/28/83 – After 13 days in a coma, Michael Stewart dies. Transit police claim that Michael Stewart sustained his injuries as a result of a fall down the subway stairs while trying to escape.

10/2/83 – The city’s Chief Medical Examiner, Dr. Elliot Gross, citing “no evidence of physical injury resulting in or contributing to Stewart’s death,” writes that he died of “cardiac arrest.”

11/2/83 – Dr. Gross rewrites the cause of death as ”Physical injury to the spinal cord in the upper neck.” He later cites “blunt force trauma” as an additional cause.

6/1/84 – After a 7-month investigation, a grand jury indicts 3 transit police officers on charges of second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. The officers plead not guilty and are released without bail.

10/5/84 – The charges are dropped by the state Supreme Court after a justice finds grand juror misconduct.

1/31/85 – Rudolph Giuliani, then a U.S. Attorney, orders a grand jury to investigate “possible obstruction of justice” by the medical examiner.

2/21/85 – After 3 weeks of investigation, 6 transit police officers (including the three earlier charged) are indicted, and charged with perjury.

11/24/85 – The state Supreme Court finds each of the 6 officers not guilty.

1987 – NYC Mayor Ed Koch dismisses Dr. Gross from his position as the city’s chief medical examiner. James B. Meehan, the transit police chief, resigns.

8/28/90 – The NYC Transit Authority agrees to settle a $40 million lawsuit against it by paying $1.7 million to Michael Stewart’s family, but, after two internal investigations, claims that the settlement “does not constitute any admission of wrongdoing.”

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*Excerpted from the recently published book, Written on the City, which I wrote! It’s on Amazon! It’s awesome! Newsweek calls it “Poignant … funny … and thought-provoking.” And it is! It’s about love and hate and beauty and secrets and sex and drugs and desires and tons of other stuff that someone out there is trying to tell you. And it looks sharp!

It’s full of provocative photos and goodies, among them: conversation tips from 1952; instructions for how to talk dirty; the revolutionary history of speakers’ corner; a judge’s reprimand of a DC tagger; a harrowing message in a bottle; a creative history of the term “vandalism,” a tragic timeline of graffiti’s saddest day; and more. And a bunch of rad artsy stuff, too.