This is Part I of an exclusive series looking at the impact of incidents involving NYPD infamous shootings of unarmed Black youth and their families.
NEW YORK- (MintPress) – New York Police Officer Richard Haste will be back in court on March 19, facing criminal charges in last year’s shooting death of Bronx teenager Ramarley Graham. The judge in the case will announce a trial date for late spring or early summer.
Haste, 31, accused of killing the 18-year-old African-American youth at point blank inside his apartment on Feb. 2, 2012, has been indicted on manslaughter charges, although Graham’s family had called for the officer to be charged with murder.
The shooting stemmed from an NYPD investigation of an ongoing drug trade in the neighborhood where Graham lived. At the time, police said an observation team identified him as a potential suspect and radioed to other officers that he appeared to be armed with a pistol.
At about the same time, according to a witness, two police officers in plain clothes but wearing NYPD raid jackets pulled up and yelled, “Police! Don’t move!”
The NYPD said at the time that Graham ran from the officers and into his building. A surveillance video released shortly afterward shows Graham walking calmly into his home seconds before police arrived, circled the building and kicked in a door.
After entering the second-floor apartment, Haste fired one shot at close range from his 9mm semiautomatic handgun, police said. Graham was struck in the upper chest and collapsed inside the bathroom as his grandmother and 6-year-old brother stood nearby.
Police found a small amount of marijuana in the toilet but no weapons on Graham or in the home.
The supervising officer, Sgt. Scott Morris, who was also at the scene, was stripped of his badges as was Haste, but he has not been charged with any crime. “My clients are very upset about that,” Jeffrey Emdin, the attorney for Graham’s family, tells Mint Press News.
A family shattered
A few months after Graham’s death, his mother, Constance Malcolm, said, “It’s really unbearable. Time goes by, and every day is different. There are days where I feel like I’m drained. I’m fighting, and I’m not seeing the results yet. It takes time, but it’s just tiring, not knowing what’s going to happen.”
Describing the son she lost, Malcolm said, “Ramarley was a normal kid, a fun-loving child who was willing to help anybody, especially older people. That’s how we grew up, respecting our elderly, and he always kept that in mind.”
“Ramarley was a normal kid, like any other kid, a fun kid,” she continued. “He loved to play with his brother. He wasn’t a sportsperson — he didn’t like the roughness of sports, so he wasn’t into that type of thing. He was a music lover. That’s who Ramarley was.”
Malcolm recalled how she found out about Graham’s death. “I got a call, and I came home and saw the whole block was blocked off with cops. I told them who I was, I gave them my ID, and they just told me to wait. They didn’t tell me anything — they just said wait.”
She was then told to go to the precinct, but not what had happened. When Malcolm got there, the police took her to the interrogation area and told her to stay on a bench in the hallway. “While I was waiting there,” she said, “another cop came up to me and said he was from the homicide unit. A few seconds later, they brought me my mom, and my mom told me my son is dead.”
The ordeal continued. “They held my mother for seven hours, interrogating her after she just witnessed what happened to her grandson. They didn’t have the decency to have some compassion toward her,” Malcolm said.
“From what I understand, when a cop gets shot or witnesses something, they take them to the hospital. But instead of taking her to the hospital, they took her to the precinct to question her. I didn’t think that was right.”
Hundreds protest
A few days after Graham’s death, about 500 demonstrators attended a rally outside the apartment building where he was killed and called for an end to police brutality.
“My son did nothing wrong. I want justice for my son, my baby,” cried Frank Graham, Ramarley’s father.
Juanita Young, 57, the mother of Malcolm Ferguson, a 23-year-old who was killed during a struggle with a narcotics officer in 2000, was there to show solidarity with Graham’s parents.
“My heart went out to the mother here. It brought back so many bad memories,” she said. “They keep killing innocent young men. It just hurts to see the abuse of power. There are no words to describe our pain as mothers.”
After a while, the crowd marched to the local 47th Precinct stationhouse, chanting, “NYPD, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?” and holding up signs reading “Murder” and “Judgement Day for NYPD child killer.”
One year later, on the first anniversary of Graham’s death, a crowd of hundreds of neighbors, friends and activists braved freezing temperatures to hold a memorial vigil outside the building where he was shot.
“It’s sad. It’s a real sad day. I shouldn’t be here doing this, but because of what happened, I am,” said his father.
Seeking justice
Also on the first anniversary of Graham’s death, his parents filed a civil suit against the NYPD, accusing it of improperly training its officers, disproportionately targeting minority youth through its controversial stop-and-frisk practices, and covering up the facts surrounding the death.
“It goes into greater detail as to what happened, the events leading up to the tragedy, how police reacted in the aftermath of the tragedy, how they compounded their errors and how they covered up their errors,” says Emdin, the family’s lawyer.
The suit, more than 100 pages long, alleges that after forcing his way into the Graham home, Haste shot the unarmed teenager in the chest in his bathroom, as his little brother and 58-year-old grandmother, Patricia Hartley, looked on.
“Why did you shoot him, why you killed him?” Hartley cried out after Haste fired, the suit claims. “Get the f*** away before I have to shoot you, too,” Haste is said to have replied as he shoved the 85-pound Hartley into a vase, the suit alleges.
According to the suit, the officers twisted Hartley’s arm before taking her into custody. “They were calling her a ‘f***ing liar,’ says Emdin. “It’s my assumption that they were trying to rattle Ms. Hartley into saying that her story couldn’t be true.”
Once released, claims the suit, Hartley was “totally exhausted, totally traumatized” and sought treatment for trauma in a hospital.
The NYPD searched the Graham’s home for 48 hours following the shooting and the family was not able to return, the suit adds. It does not specify damages but calls for an overhaul of training practices for street narcotics enforcement units, known as SNEU, of which Haste was a member.
“They had ample time to stop and think, especially since you had a supervisor there. He should have known better, but they let them go in anyway,” said Malcolm. “And because of that my son is dead. I still don’t have an answer to what happened.”
Paying homage to lives cut short
Since Graham’s death, his family has been reaching out to and connecting with other families who lost their children to police violence.
“They have tried to help other families that have gone through similar tragedies. They have gotten strength from these families and given strength to them.,” says Emdin.
They organized a Mother’s Day vigil last May and invited many mothers of victims to come and speak out and share their stories. They held a similar vigil last June for Father’s Day.
There were also 18 weekly vigils until July 19, 2012, to honor Graham’s 18 years of life. They were held every Thursday, because he was murdered on a Thursday.
“The community has been backing us from day one. They tell us they’re with us and they’re going to continue backing us until this man [Richard Haste] is charged and convicted,” Malcolm said.
“These cops who work in our neighborhoods don’t live in our neighborhoods. They come in, and they don’t get to know us. All you see is cops throwing kids up against the wall or laying them on the ground,” she explained.
“So the community is really upset because of how everything went down and how they’ve treated all these years. “They treat the community like animals. We are not animals, we are people.”