ANDREW SAVULICH/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Grieving family members of New Yorkers killed by cops are set to meet with Gov. Cuomo to push him to appoint a special prosecutor. Pictured left to right are Valerie Bell (mother of 2007 police shooting victim Sean Bell), Iris Baez (mother of Anthony Baez, who was killed by an officer’s chokehold in 1994) and Constance Malcolm (mother of Ramarley Graham who was gunned down in 2012).
Grieving family members of New Yorkers killed by cops are set to meet with Gov. Cuomo to push him to appoint a special prosecutor to handle such cases, they told the Daily News.
Moms like Constance Malcolm, whose unarmed son Ramarley Graham was gunned down in 2012, plan to argue that local district attorneys aren’t equipped to aggressively prosecute officers because their jobs require them to work closely with the police.
“They walk free. No accountability. No punishment,” she said. “We don’t get accountability and justice with police officers taking lives.”
An indictment of the officer who killed 18-year-old Graham inside his Bronx apartment was thrown out on a technicality, and a second grand jury declined to indict him.
“This is a matter of life and death with black and Latino New Yorkers. The governor has the ability to make that change,” Malcolm said. “I don’t want another mother to have to go through what I’m going through.”
A group of 18 relatives of people killed by cops penned a letter to Cuomo (pictured) last month asking him to sign an executive order to create a special prosecutor, and requesting a sit-down with the governor.
A group of 18 relatives of people killed by cops penned a letter to Cuomo last month asking him to sign an executive order to create a special prosecutor, and requesting a sit-down with the governor.
The group said the meeting was scheduled for this Friday at Cuomo’s Manhattan office. Cuomo’s administration would only say they are working to schedule a meeting in coming weeks.
Cuomo has stopped short of embracing calls for a special prosecutor, and instead proposed an independent monitor who would review any case where a grand jury fails to indict a cop who has killed an unarmed citizen.
Valerie Bell, the mother of 2007 police shooting victim Sean Bell, who also plans to participate in the meeting at Cuomo’s Manhattan office, said that proposal wouldn’t cut it.
She said she believes the officers who killed her son were acquitted in part because prosecutors failed to object to certain tactics by defense attorneys.
“It’s like they’re all in cahoots. They work together – the judges, the DAs, and the prosecutors. That’s how it seemed to me during my son’s case,” she said.
“We don’t want any more killings, but it seems like it’s happening constantly,” she said. “It’s never going to end. Every time I hear a young person, unarmed, being killed by the NYPD, especially African-Americans and Latinos, it opens up my son’s story again.”
Cuomo spokeswoman Dani Lever called his proposals a “balanced reform package to increase transparency, accountability and ensure justice.”