Focus on Police Treatment of Witness After Shooting
By AL BAKER and TIM STELLOH, New York Times, February 4, 2012
After 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.
An officer confronted the man, Ramarley Graham, who was in the bathroom possibly trying to flush some marijuana down the toilet. A moment later, a shot rang out, killing the teenager.
While officers had trailed Mr. Graham to the apartment thinking he was armed, no gun was found, making the grandmother, Patricia Hartley, 58, a critical witness. The shooting is drawing the kind of close scrutiny reminiscent of the killing of Sean Bell, who died in a hail of 50 police bullets in Queens in November 2006. Continue reading
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