Grand Jury Clears Drug Detective Who Killed Unarmed Security Guard
By C. J. Chivers
A grand jury has declined to file criminal charges against the undercover narcotics detective who fatally shot Patrick M. Dorismond, an unarmed security guard, during a desperate, two-minute brawl in March in front of a Midtown Manhattan bar, prosecutors said yesterday.
The Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, said the grand jury decided not to indict the detective, Anthony Vasquez, after concluding that the shooting -- a single bullet fired from a 9-millimeter pistol, at a range so close that the barrel was touching Mr. Dorismond's clothing -- was not intentional.
The jurors also heard evidence that Mr. Dorismond had thrown the first punch as a dispute with three detectives escalated into disorder, and that Mr. Dorismond had seized and was twisting Detective Vasquez's shooting hand when the gun fired, Mr. Morgenthau said.
Mr. Dorismond, the son of Haitian immigrants and the father of two young daughters, was the fourth unarmed black man to die at the hands of the police during a 13-month period. His death created a public uproar and became an issue in the race for the United States Senate before Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani bowed out.
It came just weeks after the acquittal of officers who had killed another unarmed black man, Amadou Diallo, and Mr. Giuliani, who called Mr. Dorismond no "altar boy" even as the investigation was just starting, was widely criticized for allowing police officials to release the dead man's juvenile criminal record and for failing to meet with his family. The controversy intensified after protestors clashed violently with the police at Mr. Dorismond's funeral.
Politics aside, the case also brought scrutiny on the public risks inherent in police buy-and-bust operations, in which teams of undercover detectives randomly approach people on the street and try to buy illegal drugs.
Mr. Dorismond, 26, was not a drug dealer. He had completed a shift as a 34th Street Partnership security guard an hour and a half before he died. To police critics and to Mr. Dorismond's family, his death was a symbol of a department whose aggressive tactics and appetite for ever-climbing arrest statistics led detectives to draw a young man into a scuffle that led to his killing.
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Carl
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