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WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : The Brutal Society

New York cops cleared in killing of Patrick Dorismond

By Bill Vann
2 August 2000

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A Manhattan grand jury cleared a New York City detective of criminal charges in the death of Patrick M. Dorismond, an unarmed Haitian-American security guard who was shot dead after angrily rebuffing undercover cops who approached him asking to buy drugs.

The July 27 decision was applauded by New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who said that Dorismond “was clearly the aggressor,” while the dead man's mother denounced the failure to indict the detective, Anthony Vasquez, as “an abuse ... discrimination,” and declared, “They took my son's life in vain.”

The killing of Patrick Dorismond, the father of two young girls, was the result of a “buy-and-bust” operation that typifies police methods that have relentlessly targeted minority youth and young workers as suspects, with no evidence that they have committed any crime.

Recognizing the intense controversy surrounding the shooting, which took place March 16, less than a month after four other undercover cops were acquitted in the killing of Amadou Diallo, the West African immigrant shot dead in his own doorway with 41 bullets, Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau publicly released a letter to Police Commissioner Howard Safir providing an extremely detailed summary of the facts uncovered in the course of the grand jury investigation.

In a statement accompanying the letter, Morgenthau acknowledged that, on the night he was shot, Dorismond was engaged in no criminal activity and had no idea that the three men whom he confronted after they asked him for drugs were police officers.

Dorismond, who worked for a Business Improvement District in the Madison Square Garden area of Manhattan's West Side, had gone to a bar with coworkers after getting off a 3-11 p.m. shift. After drinking two beers, Dorismond left and was standing outside with one of his friends, talking and getting ready to go home.

It was then that he was accosted by a man asking if he could buy crack cocaine. The man was an undercover detective working with two other undercover cops on the street and backed up by several teams of police riding in vehicles and following their every move over radio receivers.

“The undercovers had the discretion to approach individuals without observing actual narcotics transactions,” DA Morgenthau wrote in his letter. In other words, the officers were licensed to target completely innocent people in what amounted to a lethal fishing expedition.

In two and a half hours on the street, the undercover team made three buys and eight arrests. Most of those arrested, it later turned out, had sold the cops not cocaine, but innocuous substances packaged to look like drugs.

Seeing no other activity, it was agreed that the three undercovers would leave the area for a second operation in another precinct. The undercovers' supervisor, however, instructed them that “they should attempt to make additional purchases as they walked the eight blocks back to their car.” It was then that they encountered Dorismond and his friend and co-worker, Kevin Kaiser, standing and talking outside of the Wakamba Lounge, a bar near the corner of Eighth Ave. and 37th St. where the two had gone after work.

Behind the irony of this seemingly random, last-minute decision to attempt another “collar” costing an innocent man's life lay definite police methods as well as calculated political considerations.

The “buy-and-bust” operation on Eighth Ave. was being carried out in the context of a broader drug-enforcement initiative known as “Operation Condor,” a blitz carried out by the NYPD with a budget of more than $24 million using cops on overtime. With the overtime pay came definite pressure for cops to meet arrest quotas, frequently resulting in the harassment or stopping and frisking of workers and young people involved in no criminal activity whatsoever.

Secondly, the attempt to boost the detectives' arrest total took place in the midst of Mayor Giuliani's campaign for the US Senate, a political effort that placed a premium on his reputation as a “crime fighter” and requiring an uninterrupted enforcement drive. Giuliani subsequently pulled out of the campaign in the midst of a series of crises involving his marriage and health and, as polls indicated, widespread repudiation of his attempts to justify the murder of Dorismond and his portrayal of the unarmed victim as a vicious criminal.

One of the detectives approached Dorismond after the two made eye contact and asked him if he could buy some “krills,” street slang for crack. According to the detective, Mr. Dorismond, who had himself wanted to become a cop, immediately became angry, loudly declaring he was not a drug dealer.

Dorismond's friend, Kevin Kaiser, attempted unsuccessfully to pull him back from the confrontation. He described the first undercover cop who had approached Dorismond as aggressive and “in their face.” At least one of the undercover cops, he added, taunted and cursed at his friend, while another made barking noises at the Haitian-American.

One of the detectives testified before the grand jury that he indeed had barked in an attempt to “make a joke.” Treated like a gangster, Dorismond only became angrier.

The three cops all said that it was Dorismond who struck the first blow, punching the detective who asked him for drugs in the face. Kaiser, however, said it was one of the cops who initiated the fight, hitting Dorismond first. The DA discounted testimony contradicting that of the police.

The other two detectives said they moved in to protect the first undercover, and at that point claimed that Dorismond had shouted, “Get the gun” or “gun.”

Detective Vasquez testified that when he heard the word “gun,” he yelled “police” and drew his own weapon, believing that Mr. Dorismond was calling to someone and that “a gun was about to be brought into play.” The evidence suggests, to the contrary, that Dorismond saw one of the cop's weapons and, thinking that he was dealing with street thugs, was warning his friend.

The three cops testified that Dorismond then lunged at Vasquez, grabbing for his weapon. The detective claimed he could feel the gun being twisted in his hand, and it fired. “Vasquez says that he did not intentionally pull the trigger, and in fact does not know how the discharge came about,” according to Morgenthau's letter.

One civilian witness gave a different version of events, however, testifying that he saw the cop strike Dorismond with the barrel of his gun several times before pointing the weapon at the security guard's chest and firing. The DA claimed that this account was refuted by forensic evidence.

As the gunshot rang out, about a dozen other cops from the back-up teams as well as patrol cops deployed nearby stormed onto the corner. An ambulance arrived on the scene within minutes of the shooting and Dorismond was transported to St. Clare's Hospital where attempts to resuscitate him proved futile. The single bullet from Vasquez's 9mm pistol had ripped through his aorta and his right lung, and he rapidly bled to death.

Kaiser charged that after the shooting one of the cops hit him in the head repeatedly when he called out to ask Dorismond if he was all right. He also said he heard one cop tell another, referring to Mr. Dorismond, “Cuff the shot motherf—-er.”

Mayor Giuliani praised the District Attorney's handling of the case, declaring, “It's pretty hard to read this report and find something to criticize the police over.”

In the wake of the shooting, Giuliani publicly released sealed juvenile records of minor offenses committed by Dorismond a dozen years earlier. These petty incidents, the mayor claimed, proved that the Haitian-American security guard was “no altar boy,” and “had gone around punching people his whole adult life.”

The NYPD's number two man, First Deputy Commissioner Patrick E. Kelleher, said that the police had undertaken no change in tactics based on the Dorismond shooting. Kelleher, who is retiring soon to take a lucrative post as the security director for the Merrill Lynch finance house, defended the police use of force as “appropriate.”

The grand jury's decision and the Police Department's reaction make clear that Dorismond, the third unarmed young black man killed in the space of just 13 months by plainclothes cops, will not be the last such victim in New York.

In the aftermath of the decision, the famous saying of New York State's former chief judge Sol Wachtler that a DA could get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich” has been recalled. In this case, the DA clearly chose not to bring the killing of Dorismond to trial. The completely unwarranted shooting of an unarmed man clearly was accepted as merely part of the “collateral damage” that takes place policing a city characterized by the gaping class divide in city between a concentrated group of financiers and corporate executives who inhabit the luxury apartments of Manhattan, and a vast population of poorly paid workers, the majority of them minority and immigrant.