Airing slay by cops
Judge: Body cam vids must be turned over
A judge has ordered the NYPD to hand over all body-camera footage pertaining to the fatal shooting of a mentally ill man in the Bronx nearly two years ago, the Daily News has learned.
Judge Franc Perry rendered his decision late Thursday after the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest sued the Police Department for the video.
The NYPD has 30 days to surrender the full 18-minute recording from the fatal Sept. 6, 2017 clash between cops and Miguel Richards, who was shot and killed by police. Police must turn over footage from all eight officers at the scene, Perry said.
The judge’s order is a “significant development” in the fight to make NYPD body camera footage available to the public, members of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest said.
“[This decision] is going to achieve the goals we started out with: to make the NYPD aware they are going to be held accountable for their actions,” said Ruth Lowenkron, group’s disability justice director.
“This is not the way the city should be responding to people suffering from a mental health crisis. What we learn from this footage will have a huge positive affect on how best to handle these situations.”
Cops shot Richards 16 times when he refused to drop a knife and raised what turned out to be a toy gun during a standoff at an apartment in Edenwald.
Two weeks later, cops released a compilation of body camera footage from the shooting, which New York Lawyers and other mental-disability rights advocates said was heavily edited. The NYPD also failed to produce recordings from all of the officers at the scene and wouldn’t release anything from the aftermath of the shooting.
The lawyer group’s repeated efforts to get footage through Freedom of Information Law requests were rejected. When the group sued with the help of lawyers at the global firm Milbank LLP, the NYPD handed over a few more minutes of footage, but not everything.
“We are grateful that this decision requires the NYPD to comply with its obligations under the law,” said Milbank associate Benjamin Reed. “We hope complete access to the body camera footage of this tragic incident will help prevent similar outcomes in the future.”
The department can appeal Judge Perry’s decision. The NYPD and the city’s Law Department did not reply to requests for comment.
The NYPD argued that releasing all of the footage could be seen as a violation of Section 50-a of New York State’s Civil Rights Law, which bars public release of officers’ personnel records unless ordered by a judge. The department also claimed disclosing the footage would violate Richards’ and his family’s “personal privacy” and endanger witnesses.
New York Lawyers consented to having the witnesses’ faces blurred so they could not be recognized.
In his decision, Perry said the “notion that the public’s interest to be informed on how the NYPD interacts with emotionally disturbed individuals ceased after the officers were no longer engaged in firing their service weapons is contrary to the spirit and intent of the freedom of information laws and the objectives of the body worn camera pilot program.”
On the video that was released, cops could be heard ordering Richards to drop his weapon.
“You’re about a second from getting shot,” one cop says. “Do you want to die?”
The NYPD’s court-ordered body-camera pilot began five months before Richards’ death.
The impetus for body-worn cameras dates to 2013, when Manhattan federal Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk policies amounted to unconstitutional racial discrimination. Scheindlin called for a federal monitor to oversee reforms, including body camera use.
The NYPD began a mini-pilot program in 2015, then began a department-wide expansion in 2017.
The NYPD has denied requests for release of body camera footage by media outlets and others, citing an ongoing lawsuit by the Police Benevolent Association claiming section 50-a requires the footage to be kept from the public.