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.