Departmental Trial Of NYPD Officer Who Fatally Shot Bronx Teen Wraps Up

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Published on January 24, 2017, 5:36 am
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Supporters of Ramarley Graham’s family shouted over the lawyers who represented Richard Haste, the officer who killed the unarmed teen in 2012.

During closing arguments Monday in Haste’s NYPD trial, NYPD prosecutors called the officer a reckless cop who violated several police procedures in the minutes before the teen was killed. They said Haste was wrong to enter the teen’s apartment, saying he should have called a specialized police unit instead.

“If Mr. Haste would not have went into my house, yes my son would be alive,” said Raymarley’s mother Constance Graham. “He would be alive, but he was so hasty of going into my house.”

Fellow officers said that they saw Graham with a gun in his waistband as he walked on his East 229th Street block, and radioed that to other officers.

Haste said that’s why he thought the teen was armed.

The officer testified that when the teen refused to show his hands, he thought he would be killed, so he fired his gun in the bathroom.

An NYPD lawyer disputed this saying:

“Richard Haste invented something that happened in that bathroom.”

No gun was ever found, just bag of marijuana. 

“They say supposedly he was flushing a bag of weed,” his mother said. “I think you have been in my house Dean.”

She says the bathroom is so small that if her son was shot in the bathroom, he would have been knocked into the tub. She says he was in the hallway standing near his grandmother.

“You sit in the courtroom, you don’t even know she was there from how they were testifying and asking these questions,” she said.

And the family is outraged no civilian witnesses were called to testify, including the building’s owner who says cops pulled guns on her.

“One put the gun in my face, one searching my apartment,” said witness Paulette Minzie. “The one who put the gun to my face, say to me, why you in here.”

Haste’s attorneys contend he was a hero trying to take guns off the street.

“Richard Haste had to act in milliseconds,” said defense attorney Stuart London. “And he was protecting not only his own members , but people in that home.”

NYPD lawyers said:

“If Richard Haste is a hero, I shudder to think what a villain is.”

The NYPD judge in the trial will actually make a recommendation to Police Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill. He will have the final say on whether or not Haste will be fired from the department. The decision could take up to 90 days.

 

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