‘Stop killings’
Push AG probes of cops & the mentally ill
FAMILIES OF mentally ill New Yorkers who were killed by NYPD cops are expected to join local leaders Saturday to urge the state attorney general to investigate such confrontations in the future.
Starting on New York Ave. in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, demonstrators with Black Lives Matter and the James E. Davis Stop the Violence Foundation are slated to march to a nearby precinct — the 67th or 70th — to protest against police violence toward the mentally ill.
“We need all NYPD officers to be trained how to interface with the mentally ill — only 13% of the force have been trained to date,” said attorney Sanford Rubenstein. “These killings must stop.”
Over the past eight months, Rubenstein and his law partner Scott Rynecki were retained by the families of four mentally ill New Yorkers who were killed during an NYPD confrontation.
“We need a task force to look at police protocol in these situations and Gov. Cuomo to extend his executive order giving the attorney general jurisdiction in all cases in which a mentally ill person is killed by a police officer,” Rubenstein said. The march is to begin at the home of 32-year-old Dwayne Jeune, who was fatally shot by Officer Miguel Gonzalez on July 31 as he allegedly wielded a knife over another officer.
“It is time that Mayor de Blasio and (Police) Commissioner (James) O’Neill paid attention to this problem,” said Hawk Newsome, the president of the state chapter of Black Lives Matter.
Jeune was among five mentally ill city residents who died at the hands of NYPD officers in the past 11 months.
Another was Ariel Galarza, 49, who went into cardiac arrest and died when Sgt. William Melrose Tasered him twice in the Bronx last Nov. 2. Galarza had a learning disability, his family said.
And last Oct. 18, Deborah Danner was gunned down by Sgt. Hugh Barry inside her Bronx home. Danner, 66, who suffered from schizophrenia, was armed with a bat and scissors at the time. Barry has been indicted on a murder charge in Danner’s death.
On Nov. 19, Erickson Gomez Brito, whose family said he suffered from mental illness, was shot to death by Officers Andris Bisogno and Jennifer Garcia in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Brito, 21, had grabbed Bisogno’s baton and beat the pair during a stop before they fired seven shots. The succession of the shots are under scrutiny.
In January, an emotionally disturbed James Owens, 63, was armed with a knife 10 feet away from a cop who shot and killed him in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Prosecutors are investigating Owens’ death.