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New York Attorney General Won’t Investigate Police Killing of Bronx Woman New York Attorney General Won’t Investigate Police Killing of Bronx Woman
(about 3 hours later)
The New York attorney general will not investigate the fatal police shooting on Tuesday of a mentally ill woman in the Bronx, despite requests from city officials for an independent review. The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said on Thursday that his office would not investigate the fatal police shooting of a mentally ill woman this week in the Bronx.
In a statement on Thursday, the attorney general, Eric. T Schneiderman, said that the shooting of Deborah Danner, 66, fell beyond his office’s jurisdiction to act as a special prosecutor, a power created to allow independent investigations when unarmed civilians are killed by law enforcement officers. The announcement came a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, and Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill criticized the sergeant who shot the 66-year-old woman, saying her death could have been avoided and was the result of a failure to follow protocol.
Mr. Schneiderman said that his office conducted a “rigorous review” of evidence in Ms. Danner’s case and that he expected the Bronx district attorney’s office to examine the shooting. “I believe there is no question this case must be investigated,” he said. But the attorney general’s power to step in as a special prosecutor in a police shooting is generally limited to cases in which the person killed was unarmed, and the initial police account said that the woman, Deborah Danner, had tried to strike the sergeant with a baseball bat.
“Ms. Danner’s death is a tragedy that never should have happened,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “However, the legally empowered prosecutor must take the lead.” While the statement from Mr. Schneiderman did not detail evidence in the Danner case, his office’s decision not to pursue it suggested that investigators had found evidence that Ms. Danner was armed before she was shot in the bedroom of her home in the Castle Hill neighborhood.
An executive order, signed in 2015 by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, gives the attorney general the ability to prosecute cases “where, in his opinion, there is a significant question as to whether the civilian was armed and dangerous at the time of his or her death.” The news came as a disappointment to some police reform advocates, who called for Mr. Schneiderman’s office to intervene, even as the city moved quickly to condemn the killing and discipline the sergeant, Hugh Barry, who was stripped of his badge and gun less than six hours after the shooting.
But the finding that the case did not meet the order’s specifications seems to imply that Mr. Schneiderman’s office failed to find sufficient evidence that Ms. Danner was not armed and dangerous. Mr. Schneiderman called the death a “tragedy that never should have happened,” echoing Mr. de Blasio’s statements on Wednesday. He said that a full investigation was necessary but that it should be carried out by the office of the Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark.
The police said after the shooting that Ms. Danner, who struggled with schizophrenia for more than 30 years, was armed during a confrontation with Sgt. Hugh Barry — initially with a pair of scissors, and then, after she put them down, a baseball bat. “I believe there is no question this case must be investigated,” Mr. Schneiderman said. “However, the legally empowered prosecutor must take the lead.”
The police said the sergeant shot Ms. Danner after she tried to strike him with the bat. He and Ms. Danner were the only two in the room, though other officers were nearby. The episode lasted 15 to 20 minutes. In a statement, Ms. Clark vowed to “conduct a full, reasoned and independent investigation into this matter, with an open mind.” She said the investigation would be led by Wanda Perez-Maldonado, chief of the office’s Public Integrity Bureau.
But questions about Ms. Danner’s death persisted. Along with Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill, Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, condemned the shooting hours after it happened, telling reporters on Wednesday that he was “not 100 percent sure of whether it was a bat or some other kind of implement.” In addition to the investigation to determine whether criminal charges are warranted, the Police Department will conduct an inquiry into whether the sergeant violated procedure. If so, he could face internal discipline, up to dismissal from the force, though those proceedings would not begin until the criminal inquiry had been completed.
The police have not released a photo of either weapon, as is typical after a police shooting. The state attorney general’s power to act as a special prosecutor in the police shootings of unarmed people was established in 2015 by an executive order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat. Prompted by the popular outcry over the deaths of civilians killed by police officers, the order gives the attorney general the ability to prosecute cases “where, in his opinion, there is a significant question as to whether the civilian was armed and dangerous at the time of his or her death.”
The Bronx district attorney, Darcel D. Clark, said she would “conduct a full, reasoned and independent investigation into this matter, with an open mind.” In their initial account of the shooting, the police said that Ms. Danner was shot when she tried to swing a bat at Sergeant Barry, one of several officers who had responded around 6 p.m. after a 911 call from a neighbor in the building, at 630 Pugsley Avenue.
Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, who had called for both the attorney general and Ms. Clark to investigate, said he had the “utmost confidence” in her office. A law enforcement official who was familiar with the case but not authorized to speak publicly about it said that evidence, including blood and shell casings, appeared to corroborate that Ms. Danner had tried to hit the sergeant with a bat while the two were in close quarters in her apartment.
On Thursday afternoon, a group of elected officials and clergy and community members gathered in front of Ms. Danner’s 13-story brick building.
Many said that the unusually swift response from the mayor and the police commissioner had tempered the community’s reaction. “Some of us were really, really angry,” said Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president. “But when the mayor and police commissioner made that statement, they took our fire down.”
Assemblyman Luis R. Sepúlveda, a Bronx Democrat, said the shooting had a particular resonance for him. He said his mother had dealt with mental illness and committed suicide when he was 10.
“For the first time that I can remember in over 35 years in politics, an acting police commissioner and a mayor admit, without vilifying the victim, that the system failed,” he said.
Still, the anger simmered. A few called out the name of Eleanor Bumpurs, another mentally ill 66-year-old who was killed by an officer in 1984. Ms. Danner referred to Ms. Bumpurs in an essay written a few years before her death, saying that she was concerned about meeting a similar fate.
Beverly Roberts, the president of the Bronx branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, spoke to the crowd.
“We need to know what system is going to be in place so we do not have this failure again,” she said.