DA inquiry is ruled out in pol stipends
TWO LAWYERS who got their client acquitted of murder earlier this month said the case is clear proof that Mount Vernon’s troubled police department is in need of a state or federal intervention.
The lawyers, Pamela Hayes and Lauren Raysor, said they plan to file a federal lawsuit this week accusing the Mount Vernon police and the Westchester County district attorney’s office of violating Rahsi McClean’s civil rights by charging him with the murder of Gloria Nartey.
“They caused an innocent man to be put through this rigmarole,” Hayes said. “They are going to be held liable.”
During the trial, police officers admitted to losing key video evidence that Hayes and Raysor said would have helped to exonerate McClean.
Two officers also testified that they had both been convicted of misdemeanors but were still serving on Mount Vernon’s police force. One had been convicted of assault.
Even the prosecutor in the trial said she was fed up with the police department. She tore into its officers during her closing summation as she tried to salvage her case.
“It’s not a conspiracy. It’s incompetence,” prosecutor Jean Lucido Prisco said of the cops who lost the evidence.
“Someone should be suspended. Someone should be terminated. They need an overhaul of the police department.”
McClean’s May 16 acquittal was the latest blow to a department that has been under fire in the past year over unstable leadership and unsolved murders.
In March, the city’s acting police commissioner abruptly stepped down.
There was a shakeup of top brass in January as well, after the department was criticized for not doing enough to investigate an accused gang member’s death threats to an ex-girlfriend.
Days after he made the threats, David Hardy was involved in a shootout last New Year’s Eve that killed a 13-yearold bystander, investigators say.
Mount Vernon’s mayor, Richard Thomas, also said in January that because of budget cuts, the city had to ask the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to assist the local police department in its investigations.
But Hayes and Raysor said they hope McClean’s acquittal will lead to change “because we felt all along that there were serious issues in the investigation and the prosecution of this case . . . we hope this case will serve as a learning tool for major systemic changes,” Raysor said.
McClean, 27, was charged in May 2016 with the 2011 murder of Nartey. Investigators said he fired a gun during a gang dispute and a stray bullet struck Nartey, a researcher at PepsiCo.
Hayes and Raysor said prosecutors used an unreliable witness to get a grand jury to bring an indictment against McClean. A police officer had previously written in a report that he had concerns the witness was willing to tell investigators whatever they wanted to hear in order to get out of a bench warrant.
Then there’s the missing evidence. Not only did video footage disappear, but police also lost a photo array from which a witness identified McClean.
The Westchester district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case, stating that the case was sealed since it ended in an acquittal.
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ALBANY — The Albany County district attorney has decided not to investigate controversial legislative stipends paid out to eight Republican and breakaway Democratic state senators in recent years, the Daily News has learned.
District Attorney David Soares recently met with members of the mainline Senate Democrats who have been calling for a probe into the questionable stipends — but will not proceed with a formal investigation, a source with knowledge of the decision said.
While Soares won’t investigate, the attorney general and U.S. attorney reviews are still ongoing.
The source did not give a reason for the decision, which came after it became public recently that the offices of the Brooklyn U.S. attorney and the state attorney general were already looking into the situation.
Soares spokeswoman Cecilia Walsh would not comment on the matter.
A spokesman for the Senate GOP and spokeswoman for the Independent Conference had no comment on Soares’ decision.
Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, a Republican, and Sen. Jeffrey Klein, the leader of the GOP-allied Independent Democratic Conference, have insisted the stipend payouts were perfectly legal.