NY TimesAfter a police officer
fatally shot an 18-year-old man in his Bronx apartment on Thursday, the man’s grandmother, a witness to the shooting, was taken into custody and held against her will for several hours, a friend of the family said on Saturday.
The officer confronted the man, Ramarley Graham
, who was in the bathroom, possibly trying to flush
marijuana down the toilet. A moment later, a shot rang out, killing the teenager.
While narcotics officers had followed Mr. Graham to the apartment on East 229th Street in Wakefield thinking he was armed, no gun was found, making the grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, a crucial witness. The shooting seems to be drawing the sort of close scrutiny that attended the killing of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets in Queens in November 2006.
Little is known of precisely what Ms. Hartley saw and what of that she has told detectives. But her treatment by the police in the hours after her grandson was killed could become a sticking point in the investigation.
After Mr. Graham was killed, Ms. Hartley was taken to the 47th Precinct station house on Laconia Avenue and held for seven hours, said Carlton Berkley, a friend of the family’s who said he had retired from the police force as a detective in the 30th Precinct, in Upper Manhattan. Mr. Berkley added that Ms. Hartley was forced to give a statement about what happened.
“She gave it against her will,” Mr. Berkley said. “She didn’t want to speak to the police.”
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, provided a timeline of Ms. Hartley’s interviews with detectives and prosecutors. At 7 p.m., he said, she was “naturally upset but cooperative.”
Mr. Browne said Ms. Hartley spent five and a half hours at the station house. After her lawyer arrived, Mr. Browne said, she gave a recorded statement to prosecutors. She left about 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, Mr. Browne said.
Steven Reed, a spokesman for the Bronx district attorney, Robert T. Johnson, said Ms. Hartley “made no complaint” to an assistant district attorney who was at the station house.
Had she made such a complaint, it would have been relayed to the police, Mr. Reed said.
“If the nature of Mrs. Hartley’s complaint is true, it would be highly insensitive,” Mr. Reed said. “Nobody should be forced to give a statement, let alone someone who had just lost a grandson in the way that Mrs. Hartley did.”
On Friday, Raymond W. Kelly, the police commissioner, said he was unaware of any problems regarding Ms. Hartley’s treatment or if she had faced overly aggressive questioning.
“Obviously, it is a very, very traumatic situation for the grandmother,” Mr. Kelly said. “She was present when this happened, and she certainly should have been shown a sensitivity to that issue. I would hope that she was. If not — I didn’t hear about that complaint — but if that’s the case, we’ll certainly investigate.”
Mr. Kelly said that Ms. Hartley was “right there” when the shooting occurred, standing between the bedroom and bathroom doors, but he did not say whether she had a view of her grandson when he was shot. Also in the apartment at the time was Mr. Graham’s 6-year-old brother.
Civilian witnesses to disputed police shootings are not always at hand for the police and prosecutors, and Ms. Hartley’s account is important not only for what she saw but also for what she heard and for any description she might provide about the officers, their demeanor and what they said, and did, before and after the shooting.
On Thursday, officers kicked open the door to the apartment, on the second floor of a three-story house. The first officer inside was Richard Haste, 30, who has been on the force for three years, according to people with knowledge of the case. He told Mr. Graham to show his hands and then yelled, “Gun! Gun!” before firing, the police have said, citing the account of a second officer who followed him in.
Ms. Hartley, however, did not hear the officer shout “gun,” said Mr. Berkley, who declined to discuss further details of what she saw or heard.
Officer Haste and a supervisor, Sgt. Scott Morris, 36, who was in a stairwell between the first and second floors when the shot was fired, have been stripped of their guns and badges and placed on nonenforcement duty.
Mr. Berkley said he went to the station house after being contacted by Mr. Graham’s father, Franclot Graham, whom he had known for many years. He added that he waited two hours without being able to speak to her.
A colleague of his called Assemblyman Eric A. Stevenson of the Bronx, who also came to the precinct house and asked a man who he believed was an assistant district attorney if Ms. Hartley was being held against her will. The man disappeared, Mr. Stevenson said, and minutes later Ms. Hartley emerged, crying.
Mr. Stevenson said Ms. Hartley’s lawyer, Jeffrey Emdin, had also been unable to speak to her.
The city’s public advocate, Bill de Blasio, expressed his concern over the shooting in a statement on Saturday: “Part of the healing process for the Graham family, and for the city as a whole, derives from a fair, speedy and transparent investigation. That work should begin immediately.”
At the National Action Network’s House of Justice in Harlem on Saturday, the Rev. Al Sharpton and others denounced the actions of the Police Department.
“Why would police break in a house and shoot a young man and kill him?” Mr. Sharpton said. “You cannot get to a conclusion without starting with the premise. The premise is wrong. They had no business breaking in the house.”
