Police Brutality, Misconduct and Shootings

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    N.Y.P.D. Commissioner Won’t Punish Officers in Bronx Man’s Killing

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    The officers, Brendan Thompson and Herbert Davis, were previously cleared of criminal wrongdoing in the fatal 2019 shooting of Kawaski Trawick.Two New York City police officers involved in the fatal shooting of a 32-year-old Bronx man in his kitchen in 2019 acted within the law and will not be punished, the city’s police commissioner said on Friday.The announcement by the commissioner, Edward A. Caban, was the last in a series of decisions clearing the officers, Brendan Thompson and Herbert Davis, of wrongdoing in the killing of the man, Kawaski Trawick.The officers entered Mr. Trawick’s apartment the night of April 14, 2019, after responding to 911 calls saying that he had been acting erratically and threatening other tenants.When Mr. Trawick jumped toward them with a knife, the police said, Officer Thompson used his Taser against him before shooting at him four times. The two left Mr. Trawick lying on the floor of his apartment, according to police documents.Mr. Trawick’s parents, Ellen and Rickie Trawick, condemned the commissioner’s decision, saying in a statement that Mayor Eric Adams and the Police Department “don’t seem to care about protecting New Yorkers from cops who kill.”They added that “the utter disregard they have for our son’s memory” was “disgusting and shameful.”The Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, declined in 2020 to file charges against the officers, citing what she said was an inability to “prove beyond a reasonable doubt” that Officer Thompson’s “use of deadly physical force was not justified.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Police Fatally Shoot Queens Man Who Brandished Scissors, Officials Say

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      The victim’s brother contradicted aspects of the police account of the shooting and said his mother had been restraining her son when officers fired their guns.A 19-year-old man who was in mental distress and called 911 seeking help was fatally shot by the police in his Queens home on Wednesday after, officials said, he threatened officers with a pair of scissors and they opened fire.But the man’s brother, who witnessed the shooting, contradicted aspects of the police account of events, saying his mother was restraining her son when he was shot and insisting that the officers had not needed to fire their guns.The man, Win Rozario, was declared dead shortly after the shooting, which occurred around 1:45 p.m. in his family’s second-floor apartment on 103rd Street in Ozone Park, police officials said.John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, said at a news conference that the shooting took place after two officers answering a 911 call about a person in mental distress went to the apartment, where the situation became “quite hectic, chaotic and dangerous right away.” The police believe Mr. Rozario placed the 911 call, Chief Chell said.When the officers tried to take Mr. Rozario into custody, he pulled the scissors out of a drawer and “came toward” the officers, the chief said. Both officers fired their Tasers at Mr. Rozario and appeared to have him subdued, Chief Chell said.“But a mother, being a mother, came to the aid of her son to help him, but in doing so she accidentally knocked the Tasers out of his body,” the chief said. At that point, Mr. Rozario picked up the scissors and came at the officers again, the chief said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Connecticut Trooper, Brian North, Is Acquitted in Killing of a Black Teenager

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      Brian North faced up to 40 years in prison for firing seven times at Mubarak Soulemane after a car chase.A former Connecticut state trooper was acquitted on Friday of manslaughter and other charges in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Black man after a car chase four years ago.The trooper, Brian D. North, was criminally charged in 2022 in the killing of the teenager, Mubarak Soulemane, on Jan. 15, 2020. The killing occurred after Mr. Soulemane, who had schizophrenia, led state troopers on a chase that ended in West Haven, Conn., where Mr. North, who is white, fired seven shots through the driver’s side window.The six-person jury hearing the case in Milford found Mr. North not guilty on all charges, including manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Mr. North’s lawyers clapped him on the back as the jury foreman announced the verdict.“This was a difficult case,” Judge H. Gordon Hall of State Superior Court told the jury. “The work that you did was hard, and like I told you in the first place, you won’t ever forget it.”Mr. North was the first Connecticut law enforcement officer to be charged in a fatal shooting in almost 20 years, The Connecticut Post reported.The defense centered on a finding that Mr. Soulemane was holding a knife inside the car when Mr. North shot him, according an investigation by the state’s Office of Inspector General, which led to the charges.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Philadelphia Man Is Freed After 34 Years in Prison

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      Police had hidden evidence showing that Ronald Johnson did not participate in the crime he was convicted of, his lawyer said.Ronald Johnson, who had spent more than three decades behind bars, was freed on Monday after a Philadelphia judge vacated his sentence and reversed his conviction, officials said.Judge Scott DiClaudio granted Mr. Johnson’s bid for post-conviction relief by doing so. Prosecutors informed the court that they would not pursue a new trial and moved to dismiss all charges, which the judge granted.That, his lawyer, Jennifer Merrigan, said, meant Mr. Johnson was a free man.“There’s no way that they could retry him because there is absolutely no evidence against him,” Ms. Merrigan said in an interview on Tuesday.Mr. Johnson, 61, had served 34 years after he was convicted of the 1990 murder of Joseph Goldsby. The conviction had been based “solely on the false testimony of two witnesses,” the nonprofit public interest law firm Phillips Black, which advises incarcerated individuals, said in a statement.The police had hidden evidence showing that Mr. Johnson did not participate in the crime, Ms. Merrigan said. She pointed to two witnesses who had given statements to the police after being interviewed multiple times, in which they said Mr. Johnson wasn’t present, and “actually identified a different person.”“The police then hid that evidence, and so when he went to trial, the jury heard from two witnesses who said that he was there. But he and his lawyers did not know that these witnesses had given many other statements,” she said.Ms. Merrigan said that “this kind of police misconduct has happened a lot in Philadelphia, and a lot around the country.”“It is really unfair both to the people who get convicted and lose many years of their lives, but also to the victims, who don’t learn what really happened to their loved one,” she said.After a Philadelphia judge vacated his sentence and reversed his conviction on Monday, Ronald Johnson hugged his son, Ronald Johnson Jr., left. His sister, Marian Johnson, is at right.Marg MaguireMr. Johnson, who had maintained his innocence throughout his years behind bars, said he had spent the first 24 hours of his newfound freedom taking a bath, shopping for clothes and getting a driver’s license. He enjoyed a big meal with his family, with rib-eye steak, shrimp and steak fries.“I’m starting a new chapter, and I’m not rushing in,” Mr. Johnson said in an interview on Tuesday, noting that “these long years, they’ve been rough.”“You might just cry at night,” he said, but “the next day you just got to pick yourself back up.”Mr. Johnson, who will turn 62 this summer, said he thinks he’s “going to have two birthdays now.”“The day I got out, and my regular birthday,” he said. “I think I’m going to celebrate them two days the rest of my life.” More

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      Ferguson, Mo., Agrees to Pay $4.5 Million to Settle ‘Debtors’ Prison’ Suit

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      A federal judge gave the settlement preliminarily approval nearly a decade after a class-action lawsuit accused the city of wrongfully jailing plaintiffs for traffic tickets and other minor offenses.The City of Ferguson, Mo., has agreed to pay $4.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that accused it of violating the constitutional rights of thousands of people who said they were jailed without due process because they could not pay fines.The lawsuit was filed in 2015 amid protests over the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, by a white Ferguson police officer. It accused the city of jailing the plaintiffs in “deplorable” conditions simply because they could not pay debts owed for traffic tickets or other minor offenses.“They were threatened, abused, and left to languish in confinement,” lawyers for the plaintiffs argued in the suit, noting that these conditions lasted until families could produce enough cash for bail, or until jail officials decided to let them out.On Tuesday, ArchCity Defenders, the nonprofit group in St. Louis that filed the suit, said in a statement that checks would be sent to more than 15,000 people who were jailed by the city between Feb. 8, 2010, and Dec. 30, 2022, and that the amount would depend on the number of hours each of them had spent in jail.David Musgrave, Ferguson’s assistant city manager, said in an email on Thursday that the city would not comment “while the settlement agreement is pending final approval by the Court.”Mr. Musgrave directed further questions to the city’s lawyers, one of whom, Apollo Carey, declined to comment. Another lawyer did not immediately respond to an email and call. Neither the mayor nor the Ferguson Police Department could be reached for comment on Thursday evening.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      London Police Should Not Have Hired Officer Who Killed Woman, Inquiry Finds

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      Troubling information about the past of the man who killed Sarah Everard in 2021, a case that shook Britain, should have prevented him from joining the force, a long-awaited report said.An inquiry published Thursday into the murder of a young woman three years ago by a London police officer — a case that rattled Britain and set off a broader reckoning in the country about violence against women — has found that the police force missed signs of a troubling past that should have prevented him from being hired.The woman, Sarah Everard, 33, was abducted, raped and murdered in March 2021 by Wayne Couzens, a member of London’s Metropolitan Police Service. Mr. Couzens was later sentenced to life in prison for the killing.Ms. Everard’s murder cast a spotlight on how bad behavior and violence against women had been allowed to thrive within the country’s police ranks, prompting soul-searching and demands to improve the processes of hiring and overseeing officers.“It is time for all those in policing to do everything they can to improve standards of recruitment, vetting and investigation,” Elish Angiolini, a lawyer who led the inquiry, said at a news conference. “Wayne Couzens was never fit to be a police officer. Police leaders need to be sure there isn’t another Couzens operating in plain sight.”The inquiry found that Mr. Couzens’ initial vetting when he applied to join the Metropolitan Police Service in 2018 had been deeply flawed, missing available information, including on troubling incidents when he served in another police force in Kent, in southeast England. The information was overlooked when Mr. Couzens applied to work in London in 2018 and again when he applied for a specialized firearms role the next year, the inquiry found.Earlier reports included a concerning use of pornography, an indecent exposure allegation that was never acted upon by the authorities and an incident, which the inquiry did not detail, in which he was reported missing from his home.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sheriff’s Deputies Shoot Woman Inside Friend’s Home in Houston, Authorities Say

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      Body camera footage released on Saturday showed the two Harris County deputies repeatedly firing through the apartment’s window after a report of a break-in.A Houston woman was shot in her friend’s apartment this month by sheriff’s deputies who responded to a report of a break-in and fired repeatedly into the home, according to a statement and body camera footage released by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.Early on Feb. 3, the woman, Eboni Pouncy, and her friend smashed a window to get inside after forgetting the house key, according to a statement released last week by the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who is representing Ms. Pouncy.The women were startled when, after 2 a.m., the deputies began pounding on the door, according Mr. Crump. Fearing an intruder, Ms. Pouncy picked up her legally registered firearm and, shortly after, was struck by five bullets, he said.Emergency medical workers took Ms. Pouncy to a hospital for treatment, the sheriff’s office said. While the nature of her injuries was unclear, Mr. Crump said in his statement that she was recovering.According to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, the two deputies responded to a report of an intruder at an apartment on the city’s east side at around 2:10 a.m. but found no one inside. Shortly afterward, a resident of a neighboring apartment told the deputies that someone had broken into another second-floor apartment, the sheriff’s office said. When deputies went to investigate the break-in, they found the front window screen removed, broken glass and the blinds raised near the front door, the sheriff’s office said.The footage, retrieved from deputies’ body-worn cameras and released on Saturday, shows the two deputies, who appear to be women, climbing the apartment staircase, knocking on the front door and then retreating a few feet away. One of the deputies says she sees someone coming and shouts, and then both deputies begin firing repeatedly through the glass windows. Both reload their guns and continue to fire several times.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      NYPD Officer Fatally Shoots Man in Queens Apartment, Officials Say

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      New York police officials said the man had pointed an “imitation gun” that seemed to be a real firearm at officers.A New York City police officer on Monday fatally shot a man in a Queens apartment who officials said had pointed an “imitation gun” at officers who were responding to a 911 call reporting that shots had been fired at the building.The man, whom the police did not immediately identify, refused officers’ commands to drop what appeared to them to be a real firearm, Jeffrey B. Maddrey, the Police Department’s chief of department, said at a news conference.“It appears to be an imitation gun,” he said.Chief Maddrey did not say whether the officers had worn and activated body cameras during the shooting, although the circumstances he described suggested they should have under Police Department guidelines. One of the officers fired “multiple shots,” he said, and hit the man at least once.The shooting occurred shortly after 10:30 a.m. in a fourth-floor apartment at the Ocean Bay Apartments public housing complex in the Arverne section of the Rockaway peninsula, Chief Maddrey said.Two uniformed officers responding to the 911 call came to the address, then went to the apartment based on an initial investigation, Chief Maddrey said. He did not say who made the call.Lamont Davis, a porter, said he had been sweeping outside the building where the shooting occurred when two police officers appeared and asked whether he had heard anything unusual. He said he told them no. They told him they were responding to a report of gunfire, Mr. Davis said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Aurora, Colo., Pays $1.9 Million to Black Family Wrongly Detained by Police

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      The family of five was stopped at gunpoint in 2020 by officers in Aurora, Colo., who mistook their S.U.V. for a stolen vehicle.Five members of a Black family who were wrongfully detained at gunpoint in Aurora, Colo., in 2020 by police officers who mistook their S.U.V. for a vehicle that had been stolen received $1.9 million to settle their lawsuit against the city, the family’s lawyer said Monday.The family — Brittney Gilliam, 29 at the time, her daughter, who was 6, sister, who was 12, and two nieces, 17 and 14 at the time — had gone to get their nails done when Aurora Police Department officers ordered them to lie on the ground and handcuffed two of the girls, the authorities said at the time.A widely shared video of the episode showed four children lying on the ground in a parking lot, crying and screaming as several officers stood over them, sparking further outrage over a department already mired in controversy over the 2019 death of a Black man and its use of excessive force.The settlement was reached several months ago but remained confidential because there are children involved, David Lane, the lawyer, said by phone Monday. It is divided equally among Ms. Gilliam, her nieces, sister and daughter, he added, noting that the younger children will need to wait until they turn 18 to be able to access their share.The settlement, Mr. Lane said, both helped to avoid re-traumatizing the children in a deposition or trial, and to bring attention to the costly nature of settling similar cases — which the city has done several times in recent years following accusations that its police officers had used excessive force.From 2003 to 2018, the city settled at least 11 police brutality cases for a total of $4.6 million, according to the A.C.L.U. of Colorado. In 2021, the city agreed to pay $15 million to the family of Elijah McLain to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit over the police confrontation in 2019 that ended his life.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More