Grand jury Clears Garfield Officers in fatal shooting of Black Teen - Advocates Outraged

From [HERE] and [HERE] A grand jury has cleared two police officers of wrongdoing in the shooting of a Garfield teen last year. Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli released the "no-bill" decision early Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday's decision brought an end to a seven-month investigation into the incident, and revealed new details that law enforcement officials had not yet disclosed.

The officers involved, Sgt. Jose A. Brito of the Garfield department and Kenneth J. Keenan of the Bergen County police, were pursuing 19-year-old Malik Williams on Dec. 10 after Williams fled Garfield police headquarters, where he was being processed on domestic assault charges. Police claimed Williams ran into a garage and barricaded himself inside of it. When Police forced their way in they said they saw him armed with unspecified tools. The officers responded by firing their guns numerous times, killing Williams. 

Until the grand jury's decision, officials would say only that Williams had armed himself with "unnamed tools" — a constant source of frustration among supporters of Williams and observers of the case.

When a court ordered the Bergen County Police Department and the Garfield Police department to release their use of force reports — forms that catalogue police tactics in subduing suspects— the description expanded slightly to one "blunt object" and another "knife/cutting object." On Wednesday, Molinelli's office released two photos: One of a battered, 16-inch hacksaw and another of a claw hammer.

"Both Officer Keenan and Sergeant Brito ordered Williams to stop and drop his weapons," Molinelli said. "Malik Williams refused to comply." Police said that Williams advanced, and police fired upon him five times, killing him.

In the months after the shooting, Williams' family and other residents staged numerous protests calling for a grand jury investigation, which was finally launched in March.

Surveillance footage obtained by NJ.com from the Garfield police station shows Williams entering the reception area of the station on December 10, 2011 at 1:18 p.m. A day earlier, Rivera had reported a domestic violence incident, Molinelli said Wednesday. Police called Williams the next day to inform him of the charges.

His mother answered the phone. They want you down at the police station, she told him. "He was like, 'Are you serious?' And I was like, 'Yes.' And he said, 'I'm going there now,'" Shirley Williams told NJ.com shortly after his death. Malik walked to the station.

In that surveillance tape, Williams is seen turning himself in, being escorted into the booking room, and calling his mother. They spoke for about eight minutes, and Shirley Williams informed her son that she couldn't afford his bail, set at $10,000.

He'd have to be taken to the Bergen County Jail. His mother said she'd contact a bail bondsman.

The full video released by the Garfield Police Department earlier this year is more than two hours long. Shirley Williams wondered what the hold up was.

"So my thing is, I don't understand why he stayed there from 1-something until this incident happened," she said in December.

"Malik Williams' stay in the processing room was lengthy because the officers were having technical difficulties with the computers involved with fingerprinting and photographing," Prosecutor Molinelli said in his statement released Wednesday. "Since Malik Williams was calm and cooperative during his time in the processing room, the officers did not keep him continually cuffed."

Williams was cuffed and uncuffed several times over the course of those two hours.

At 3:20 p.m., the three officers inside the booking room, who had come in and out of the door to the police station stairs all afternoon, were occupied by the computer. Technical difficulties, Molinelli said.

Williams looked at the officers, distracted by the glow of the monitor. Then he looked at the door. Then he fled.

Williams bounded down the stairs, followed closely by the three officers, and later a fourth who — hearing the commotion — followed after them. He fled through an exit as surveillance cameras caught the last images of Malik Williams, sprinting through the station's parking lot.

Lynn Mertens was walking her dachshund Benny in Dahnert's Lake Park, next to the police station, when Williams bounded past her, followed by the Garfield police officers.

"They yelled at me to stop him," she told NJ.com in March. "I was like, 'What am I going to do?' And he ran by and just looked at me — like a scared look — and ran right past me, and the cops tried to chase after him."

According to Prosecutor Molinelli's narrative, Williams ran down the railroad tracks adjacent to the park and over to Dahnert Park Lane, a dead-end street.

Twenty-two Dahnert Park Lane is a residential house with a detached garage on the right-hand side of the street. It can be seen in photographs of the demonstrations that followed the shooting, guarded by half a dozen police officers as the residents peeked out of their windows.

In his statement Wednesday, Prosecutor Molinelli released some other details about the home: "The property at 22 Dahnert Park Lane contains a 2 family home and a detached garage," he said. "This garage has a side door and a roll up bay door. The side door and bay door are always kept unlocked. The residents of 22 Dahnert Park Lane typically access the garage through the unlocked side door."

He went on: "The evidence obtained during the course of this investigation indicates that once Malik Williams entered this detached garage, he barricaded the side door with 3 air conditioner units and a very heavy drill press."

By this time the Garfield police had requested the help of the Bergen County Police Department, and Canine Officer Kenneth J. Keenan arrived on the scene with his canine partner, Kahn. The two met Garfield Sergeant Jose Brito.

Molinelli said that the dog was able to get his nose in a small opening in the side door, now barricaded shut, and indicated to Keenan that someone was inside. The police opened the bay door. Police say Williams was there, armed with tools.

Until the grand jury's decision, officials would say only that Williams had armed himself with "unnamed tools" — a constant source of frustration among supporters of Williams and observers of the case.

When a court ordered the Bergen County Police Department and the Garfield Police department to release their use of force reports — forms that catalogue police tactics in subduing suspects, as mandated by the state attorney general — the description expanded slightly to one "blunt object" and another "knife/cutting object."

On Wednesday, Molinelli's office released two photos: One of a battered, 16-inch hacksaw and another of a claw hammer.

"Both Officer Keenan and Sergeant Brito ordered Williams to stop and drop his weapons," Molinelli said. "Malik Williams refused to comply."

Police said that Williams advanced, and police fired upon him five times, killing him.

A controversial case

Up to the point that the bay door opened, the accounts of the Williams family and those of law enforcement do not conflict significantly. Afterward, they split entirely.

In a statement that offered condolences to the Williams family but was wholly supportive of the officers involved, Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan said that the case "underscores the risks that police and other public safety personnel face every day."

"And when they are confronted by threats to their personal or public safety they frequently must react within seconds or risk the loss of their own or other innocent lives," Donovan said. "Unfortunately, we do not have the benefit of revisiting history. There’s no instant replay."

What is left, in lieu of instant replay, are the accounts of police, and the accounts of Williams' family and supporters.

The police account, a narrative of which was released by Molinelli on Wednsday, says that Williams continually advanced toward the officers with the tools, "yelling, cursing and holding the weapons in a threatening manner."

Molinelli said that despite repeated verbal warnings, Williams continued to advance toward the two officers, and that Keenan did not draw his weapon until Williams was 10 feet away from him, and did not fire it until he was 7-8 feet away. The prosecutor released his office's findings in a document released to the media [PDF].

The medical examiner's report has not been released, and grand jury deliberations are kept secret.

But according to the prosecutor, the sequence of the gunshot wounds could not be determined by a medical examiner. But one bullet entered the right side of Williams' chest and exited through his back; a second entered near his naval, and a bullet was later recovered from his abdomen; a third entered "the lateral aspect of the right thigh" and exited through the front of his groin; a fourth, from Keenan's weapon, entered at his right wrist and lodged below his thumb; and a fifth entered the back of his left hand, though no bullet was recovered from the scene.

Following the grand jury's decision, Bergen County Police Chief John Higgins said the conclusion matched what his own internal investigation found: That the officers were justified.

"We regret not only the loss of life but also the impact this incident has had on so many lives," he said.

Brito's attorney, Charles Sciarra, told The Record that his client was looking forward to getting back to work.

“He has been lied about, slandered,” Sciarra said. “People with no information and no knowledge of anything have accused him of all kinds of horrendous lies."

A series of protests

The Williams family disputes the police account of the shooting, and their attorney, Victor Urbaez, has said that they commissioned their own independent autopsy, which will be included in the $150 million wrongful death suit they plan to file in August. By Urbaez's account, Williams was not only a suspect with a record, but someone who had been repeatedly targeted and harassed by police.

"He was a kid in hiding," Urbaez said. In the weeks leading to the grand jury's unannounced decision, Williams' supporters organized protest after protest to draw attention to the case, as well as to what they called systemic corruption and harassment of minority youth.

At the most recent demonstration, they drew attention to a 2011 lawsuit against the city's police chief, calling for his ouster. The group, once organized around the death of one Garfield teen, created United Residents of Garfield Engaging Neighborhood Transformation, or U.R.G.E.N.T. Garfield, and have been engaging in issues around community policing and environmental contamination in the city.

"They won the battle," Reggie Buggs, one of the founding members of U.R.G.E.N.T., said of the grand jury decision Wednesday. "But we're still fighting the war."

Urbaez said that in addition to the civil suit, on Thursday he would be filing a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department in Newark.

"We are hopeful that the Justice Department will come in and play an active role in what's happening here in Garfield," Urbaez said.

On Wednesday, the Williams family and their supporters marched from the Bergen County Courthouse in Hackensack to One Bergen County Plaza, where county law enforcement leadership were testifying at a consolidation hearing.

After demonstrating outside the building, police allowed 15 of them to enter the building, citing occupancy restrictions from the fire marshall. They entered quietly, but during a five-minute recess, confronted Molinelli, Higgins and other law enforcement officials.

"Not right now," Molinelli told the demonstrators, who were removed from the meeting room by police. The freeholders postponed the hearing, telling attendees that the prosecutor had left.