After Ex-Officer's Conviction, Investigators Will Challenge the
Blue Wall — By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
The
conviction of the former police officer Joseph Gray on manslaughter
charges Friday was the end of a nine-month effort by investigators
assigned to look into the deaths of several members of a family slain as
they crossed a Brooklyn street.
Now, the
focus will shift to the actions of some police officers responsible for
investigating Mr. Gray's role in the deaths, and whether he received
special treatment.
The police
Internal Affairs Bureau is looking into whether a series of
investigative and procedural missteps was evidence of simple
incompetence by the police - or of a concerted effort to help a
colleague in trouble.
The
Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, whose office prosecuted
Mr. Gray, has opened a criminal investigation into the conduct of
several officers and at least one official with the police union, the
Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.
"Our office
has already launched an investigation into police misconduct in this
case, specifically for obstruction of governmental administration and
hindering prosecution," said Joseph Petrosino, the chief of the felony
trial division and a prosecutor in the trial. He said the investigation
would be conducted by Charles Guria, an executive assistant district
attorney who oversees police corruption cases.
Police
Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly has asked the department's general counsel
to "conduct a thorough review of all aspects of the Gray case,"
according to a statement.
"We will
then determine whether any disciplinary action or procedural changes
need to be made," the statement said.
On Aug. 4,
Mr. Gray struck and killed Maria Herrera, 24, her son Andy, 4, and her
sister Dilcia Peña, 16, in Sunset Park after a 12-hour drinking binge
that began with several fellow officers outside the 72nd Precinct
station house and continued at a strip club that was off limits to
officers in the precinct. Mrs. Herrera's unborn son died hours after
being delivered by Caesarean section.
The issues
of errors by the police surfaced in the middle of the trial, when an
exasperated prosecutor, speaking in open court, voiced his unhappiness
with the handling of the case by officers.
Prosecutors
detailed how a highway officer failed to fill out certain parts of an
accident report, how photographs of the crime scene were blank when they
were developed, how a chemist failed to turn over 60 pages of reports on
Mr. Gray's blood-alcohol level to the defense as required under law, and
how several pieces of evidence were temporarily displaced.
According
to testimony by one of the accident investigators, police union
officials asked him which sobriety test Mr. Gray would be most likely to
"beat."
The
investigator, Martin Finkelstein, who has since retired, also
acknowledged that he had sought to give Mr. Gray "a benefit." Mr.
Finkelstein is among those whose actions will be the focus of Mr.
Hynes's investigation, officials said, as will at least one union
official, Officer Michael J. Immitt.
The
officer's actions and possible missteps have revived the debate over the
continued existence of the so-called blue wall of silence, the practice
of officers closing ranks to protect one another. The wall was said to
have cracked after the sexual torture of Abner Louima in a Brooklyn
police precinct station house in 1997, perhaps because that crime was so
heinous that few officers could see themselves in a similar situation,
and some refused to take part in a cover-up.
In the Gray
case, the killing of a pregnant woman and two family members was also an
unspeakable horror. But the investigation is focusing on whether any
officers closed ranks to help Mr. Gray afterward, in part because
drinking was its root cause.
"The blue
wall is still an issue, and it's not surprising that sort of behavior
would take place around drinking, which is seen as a kind of a venial
sin," said Prof. Jerome H. Skolnick, who teaches at New York University
Law School and is an expert on police practices. "It is so widespread
that cops are most likely to cover up for one another on that issue."
The P.B.A.
declined to comment and Officer Immitt did not return a call seeking
comment. Mr. Finkelstein, the retired officer, could not be reached for
comment.
Officer
Immitt has run afoul of prosecutors before. During the trial of three
officers on obstruction of justice charges in the Louima case, federal
prosecutors in Brooklyn accused him of orchestrating a cover-up of the
sexual attack on Mr. Louima. He denied the accusation and was not
charged with a crime.
The three
officers in the Louima case - Thomas Weise, Thomas Bruder and Charles
Schwarz - were convicted in that case in March 2000, but their
convictions were overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for
the Second Circuit on Feb. 28.
Prosecutors
said that several days after the attack, Officer Immitt summoned the
three officers and Officer Justin Volpe, who later pleaded guilty to the
assault on Mr. Louima, to a private meeting in the basement of the 70th
Precinct station house in Brooklyn to urge them to keep silent about the
case.
Although
what was discussed at the meeting was not entirely clear, prosecutors
introduced evidence at the trial showing that shortly afterward, rumors
began to circulate that Mr. Louima had been injured in a gay sex club
rather than in a police assault.
During the
obstruction trial, Officer Immitt admitted he told the officers to "sit
tight" and "don't talk about it." But he denied there was any discussion
at the meeting about trying to cover up the assault or impede the
investigation.
And despite
a front-page newspaper story published earlier that day, he said none of
the officers had told him about the nature of the assault allegation
that Mr. Louima had made.
Officer
Immitt then spoke to officers in the precinct from every shift, urging
them not to talk about the incident.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/nyregion/05DRUN.html?ex=1021644354&ei=
1&en=e2f5c941faf82fb6