Federal Appeals Court Judge Rules for New Trial for Black Providence Police Officer Killed by Friendly Fire

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A federal appeals court Monday said a jury should hear civil rights claims against the city of Providence for the friendly fire death of a black police officer, overturning a judge's decision to dismiss the case. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said that U.S. District Judge Mary Lisi should have allowed a jury to decide if the city was responsible for poorly training a police officer involved in the shooting death of Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. Young was off-duty and in plain clothes when he tried to assist fellow officers with a disturbance outside a diner on Jan. 28, 2000. Two white police officers, supervisor Carlos Saraiva and rookie officer Michael Solitro, mistook Young for a suspect and fatally shot him after he failed to drop his weapon. In November 2003, Lisi threw out the lawsuit filed by Young's mother, Leisa Young, rejecting the lawsuit's contention that the police department's deficient hiring and training contributed to Young's death. The appeals court found that Lisi was wrong to have taken the case away from the jury, saying a jury could find that the police department should have known such a shooting was a "predictable consequence" of its failure to train how on- and off-duty officers should interact. Solitro and Saraiva were cleared by a state grand jury of any criminal wrongdoing. They also were cleared of federal civil-rights violations by the U.S. Attorney's Office. In the lawsuit, Young's mother had sought $20 million in damages, claiming that haphazard training and hiring by the department led to her son's death. In the first phase of the trial, the all-white jury decided that Solitro, an eight-day rookie, violated Young's civil rights, but Saraiva did not. The appeals court affirmed those findings, and also let stand Lisi's decision to dismiss Leisa Young's claims regarding hiring, the training of both Saraiva and her son, and supervisors' disciplining of Saraiva. [more] and [more]
  • Pictured above: He was the first African American officer in the State of Rhode Island to have been killed in the line of duty, and the only known officer to have died as the result of "friendly fire". [more]