------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 3, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
COP GETS OFF IN DORISMOND KILLING
By Heather Cottin New York
Almost three years to the day after New York City Detective Anthony Vasquez shot unarmed security guard Patrick Dorismond to death, the office of the U.S. Attorney, the FBI and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department have concluded that the killing was not even a violation of Dorismond's civil rights.
Dorismond, who had been sitting in a midtown bar, had angrily rejected an offer to sell him drugs by the undercover narcotics cop, who then shot and killed him.
Dorismond's shooting followed a spate of police killings in Black communities here. In October 1999, undercover narcotics police in the Bronx had fired 41 bullets at an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, while he was merely standing in the entry of his building. The cops who killed him went free. On March 1, 2000, cops in the Bronx shot to death an unarmed youth, Malcolm Ferguson, just days after he participated in a protest over Diallo's murder.
New York cops were on a murder spree.
When Vasquez shot Dorismond on March 16, 2000, Mayor Rudy Giuliani expressed no sympathy to the family. He instead maligned the victim by releasing his sealed juvenile arrest record. The Haitian community expressed outrage at this murder and character assassination.
In a city where racist cops continue to terrorize the Black community, Muriel Goode-Trufant of New York's special fed eral litigation division called Doris mond's death an "accident." The city agreed to pay Dorismond's family $2.25 million to settle a lawsuit. This was an indication, said the family's lawyer, Derek Sells, that "the city believes there was some wrongdoing." He added, "There's no amount of money that can replace Patrick."
Meanwhile, the detective who shot Dorismond is armed, dangerous and, like all the other killer cops, back on the streets of New York. n
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