Glitch KOs key police database
TWO COPS ARE being disciplined for their roles in the shooting death of an unarmed Bronx man, police sources said Thursday.
NYPD Sgt. Scott Morris and Officer John McLoughlin faced departmental charges in connection with the killing of 18-yearold Ramarley Graham in February 2012. On Thursday, their cases were settled.
Morris will be suspended for 30 days without pay, then will resign without the “good guy” letter that would have allowed him to carry a weapon, sources said.
McLoughlin, meanwhile, accepted a penalty of 45 lost vacation days and was placed on dismissal probation for a year — meaning he could be fired for any infraction, sources said.
The cop who shot and killed Graham — Richard Haste — quit the force earlier this year, shortly before he was going to be fired.
For Constance Malcolm, Graham’s mother, who has repeatedly accused police of murder and has sought the release of Morris’ and McLoughlin’s disciplinary records, there is no justice.
Malcolm (below, with Ramarley’s father Frank Graham) said the actions of both cops set in motion the chain of events leading to her son’s death.
“I’m glad Sgt. Morris will be off the force within a month,” she said, “I am calling on the NYPD and the de Blasio administration to reconsider the probation for McLoughlin, and fire him instead, and to also release the files related to my son's murder that they have been fighting to continue withholding in court.” Morris was the supervisor on scene when McLoughlin kicked in the door to the Graham family’s home and entered with Haste. Police say they thought Graham was armed, but no weapon was ever found. Haste was indicted for manslaughter, but a judge tossed the indictment on a technicality and another grand jury decided not to charge him. He was later brought up on departmental charges and resigned in March, after an internal trial in which he testified that he handled the deadly encounter flawlessly.
“The tactics were the best representation of my training and experience given the situation I encountered,” Haste said.
Neither Morris nor McLoughlin was charged with a crime.
But Morris was hit with an administrative charge of failure to supervise, and Morris was accused of using poor tactics.
When Morris and McLoughlin arrived at One Police Plaza Thursday, they agreed to plead out their cases, sources said.
“They decided they didn’t want to go to trial,” one source said. “They negotiated a disposition and accepted what was presented to them. They really didn’t have much choice.”
Indeed, a second source said the cops were led to believe that had they gone to trial they would have been fired.
The lawyers for Morris and McLoughlin had no comment. A KEY statewide criminal database that shares information with police departments and courts has been down for a day.
The computer network — the Statewide Automated Biometric Identification System — “is experiencing a temporary outage due to a technological malfunction,” the state Division of Criminal Justice Services said.
A state official noted that the database, down since Wednesday afternoon, was not hacked and no information from it was lost.
Backup systems containing the information remain accessible, which is allowing the agency to process criminals and transmit rap sheets, the official said.
But the process is much slower.
The database contains about 10 million fingerprints.
When working properly, suspects’ prints are transmitted electronically when arrested.
The system then searches for matches and criminal histories — or lack thereof — and transmits the records back to the local department where the arrest occurred.
The process typically takes five minutes.
Janine Kava, a spokeswoman for the Division of Criminal Justice Services, said the system went down at about 1 p.m. Wednesday and that staff were working “nonstop” to get it back up.