A year later, no answers in Cobleskill man’s death
Pedestrian was struck by police SUV; probe ongoing
An investigation by the state attorney general’s office of the death of a Cobleskill man who was struck by a village police officer on Nov. 9, 2018, is still ongoing more than a year after his death. His friends are tired of waiting for answers.
Gerard Roldan III, 26, was struck around 10 p.m. by an officer on Main Street as he tried to return to a local Mcdonald’s to retrieve a bag he had forgotten. The officer was one of two who were trying to stop a vehicle they had spotted speeding just moments before.
The attorney general’s office took on an investigation of the
crash shortly after Roldan died. A spokeswoman for the office said on Wednesday that the investigation is still active but offered no other details about its status.
Cobleskill Police Chief Jeff Brown said his understanding is that the State Police collision reconstruction unit has completed its investigation and that the state attorney general’s office is still compiling a report for Attorney General Letitia James’ review.
“That was toward the beginning of the month. I checked in with investigators from the AG’S office,” he said.
The lack of information frustrates Roldan’s friends.
“Everyone is pretty upset about it,” said Ashley Jacobs, who took in Roldan when he was a teenager. “If roles were reversed, it would have been over and done with.”
Those close to Roldan aren’t the only ones who want to know what state investigators have found.
Former Cobleskill Police Chief Richard Bialkowski, now the head of the police department at SUNY Cobleskill, said he was also interested in knowing the status of the case.
“To be quite honest, I’m anxiously awaiting to hear like the rest of the public because even though I’m gone, it was something that happened while I was there, and I’d like closure just as much as ever ybody else,” he said.
The attorney general’s office, then overseen by Barbara Underwood, took over the investigation under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s 2015 executive order empowering the office to investigate any police action that results in the death of an unarmed civilian. Officials said the attorney general’s special investigations and prosecutions unit can present the matter to a grand jur y if it finds sufficient evidence, or issue a detailed report explaining why it did not do so.
The same executive order has been employed to investigate deaths such as the April 2016 shooting of Edson Thevenin, who was killed by a Troy police officer after f leeing a DWI stop. The order was crafted to address public concern that local prosecutors might not be objective when investigating possible wrongdoing by the police departments they work closely with. The attorney general’s office later faulted the Troy Police Department ’s handling of the case and is prosecuting former Rensselaer County District Attorney Joel Abelove over allegations he lied to the grand jur y that investigated his handling of the case.
Since Cuomo’s order was issued, the AG’S unit has investigated the deaths of 17 unarmed civilian at the hands of police officers, including Thevenin in Troy and Andrew Kearse, who died while in Schenectady police custody in 2017. Only one of those 17 investigations resulted in charges against an officer.
Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Maller y recused her office from the Roldan case because her husband, Steven Winegard, is a long time officer with the Cobleskill Police Department. She said she wanted to “make sure that the citizens of Schoharie County can have confidence in their elected off icia ls.”
The police SU V struck Roldan as he crossed the road a few hundred feet from the Mcdonald’s around 10 p.m. on a rainy night. The officers stopped and administered first aid, police said.
The officer whose SU V struck Roldan voluntarily submitted to alcohol screening, which came back negative. He was never publicly identified, but the Cobleskill Times-journal reported that he returned to work at the department in December 2018.
Brown, the current chief, said Wednesday that after Roldan’s death the department made two changes to its rules and reg ulations, including a change that requires officers to turn on emergency lights whenever they are tr ying to stop a vehicle.
Roldan, a New York City native nicknamed “Brooklyn,” was known in the village as someone who walked the streets and moved from couch to couch. He was employed at Taco Bell at the time of his death.
Kayla Garo, a former girlfriend, told the Times Union last year that he was an outgoing person who was willing to share his last dollar with someone who needed help.
“He died before he had a chance to live a life,” she said. “It ’s a shame, really. It ’s a huge loss.”
The police SUV struck Roldan as he crossed the road a few hundred feet from the Mcdonald’s around 10 p.m. on a rainy night. The officers stopped and administered first aid, police said.