(MintPress) — In the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, three New York police officers have testified before a Bronx grand jury in the case of 18-year-old, Ramarley Grahamman who was fatally shot in his bathroom this February.
The African American teenager was killed after a white narcotics officer shot him after hearing reports that Graham had a handgun in his waistband.
No weapon was found on the victim, but police found a bag of marijuana in the toilet.
The police officer, Richard Haste, confronted Graham in his bathroom on Feb. 2 and shot him once, according to police.
The jury is considering criminal charges against Haste, according to those close to the case.
The case has raised questions about methods employed by the Police Department’s Street Narcotics Enforcement Units, including the 47th Precinct which Haste belongs to.
Upon reviewing the case, it was found that some officers violated procedure by wearing plain clothes and not identifying themselves as police. Some residents of the neighborhood have said that the aggression shown by the NYPD street program is linked to the stop-and-frisk program.
“The public has every reason to question whether this shooting was the product of the NYPD marijuana arrest crusade, or whether it’s the product of their hyper-aggressive stop-and-frisk program,” said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
Although the case is focused on the shooting of Graham, questions are arising whether the team of officers had the legal authority to break down the apartment door without a warrant.
“If they thought he had a gun, they should have stopped him on the street and not waited for him to go inside,” John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, said. “Any reasonable officer would have known that they needed a warrant to get into the house.”
According to police officials, members of the narcotics team broadcast over their radios that they saw a handgun in Graham’s waistband as he left a convenience store that was under surveillance due to a possible drug activity. While private surveillance footage of his apartment complex shows that Graham walked calmly up to the door, police soon swarmed into view, guns drawn.
“This isn’t just the collateral damage of policing in a big city,” Lieberman said. “The NYPD has adopted certain policies that are off the charts.”