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Where the hell is the US Justice Department on this case?


Where the hell is the US Justice Department on this case?

Westchester District Attorney under fire for troubled past with police cases

Critics say Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore has failed in many high-profile cases to charge police when residents allege excessive force by cops


A black law enforcement group slammed Westchester’s top prosecutor as weak on police misconduct — days before a grand jury begins deciding whether an officer who fatally shot a man should be charged with a crime.

Critics say Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore has failed in many high-profile cases to charge police when residents allege excessive force by cops.

“Janet DiFiore has continuously turned over investigations of questionable police actions of use of force back to the police department in question,” said Damon Jones, a New York rep for Blacks in Law Enforcement of America.

DiFiore wasn’t available for comment on Friday, but her spokesman said such claims are nonsense.

All eyes are on DiFiore after Officer Anthony Carelli fired two shots that killed Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., a 68-year-old former Marine with a heart condition. White Plains police officials said soon after the Nov. 19 shooting that Chamberlain had a knife and lunged at cops.

The dead man’s relatives and lawyers deny the police account, based on audio and video tapes of the violent encounter. The tapes haven’t been made public.

DiFiore’s spokesman Lucian Chalfen pointed Friday to a half-dozen cases where her office has prosecuted on-duty cops.

Last year, DiFiore charged Yonkers policeman Raul Ramirez with assault and misconduct after Ramirez left his assigned section one night in 2010, drove to another precinct, and attacked men who were in the midst of a bar fight with a relative. Ramirez pleaded guilty and was dismissed from the force.

In 2007, DiFiore charged Mount Kisco policeman George Bubaris with second-degree manslaughter in the death of Rene Perez, a homeless Guatemalan immigrant, and one of several day laborers assaulted in the Mount Kisco area during that period.

Bubaris was accused of arresting Perez then driving him 6 miles away and dumping him on a deserted road, where the man was later found dead from internal injuries. A jury acquitted him. Immigrant advocates said DiFiore’s office acted only after the FBI began investigating the case.

One of the most high-profile cases critics say DiFiore’s office boasted was a 2007 incident involving Dominican immigrant Irma Marquez and Yonkers policeman Wayne Simoes.

Simoes and other cops responded to a 911 call of an ill woman outside a Spanish restaurant. As they tended to the woman, Marquez, who was a relative of the woman, tried to intercede but was repeatedly pushed back by the cops.

At one point, Simoes was caught on a store video camera grabbing Marquez, lifting her in the air and body slamming her face-down onto the ground. She suffered a fractured skull and severe bruises to her face.

Instead of charging the cops, DiFiore’s office prosecuted Marquez for obstructing justice and disorderly conduct. The Justice Department then intervened and charged Simoes with civil rights violations. He was later acquitted.

How DiFiore handles the Chamberlain case will be especially important given her increasing statewide profile.

In July, she became president of the District Attorney’s Association of New York State. And in December, Gov. Cuomo appointed her chair of his new Joint Committee on Public Ethics, which is charged with investigating wrongdoing by elected and appointed officials in the state.



Had enough?  Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in America.  Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and a permanent  DOJ office on Police Misconduct.