lohud.com wrote:WHITE PLAINS — The family of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. said it would ask for a federal criminal investigation in the wake of a Westchester County grand jury’s decision not to indict White Plains police officers in Chamberlain’s shooting death.
Attorneys for the dead man’s family called the grand jury’s decision – first reported by The Journal News on LoHud.com – “extremely troubling,” and released a statement from his son that vowed: “There will be justice for Kenneth Chamberlain Sr.”
“My family and I are profoundly saddened at the fact that there was no criminal indictment in the murder of my father,” Kenneth Chamberlain Jr. said in the statement released Thursday.
“A full and fair investigation was promised by the D.A., but I have to question what evidence was presented to the grand jury,” the statement said. “As I have stated before it is hard to put trust in a system that I feel has failed me already and that no indictment sends a very strong message to the people of Westchester County regarding police misconduct, brutality and criminality.”
Chamberlain, 68, was killed at the end of an hour-long standoff with officers who were dispatched to his 135 S. Lexington Ave. apartment shortly after 5 a.m. on Nov. 19, when his medical alert device went off, apparently by accident. Family members said officers insisted on coming inside even after Chamberlain, who had a chronic heart condition, told them he was fine and there was no emergency.
The stand-off ended with Chamberlain being fatally shot by Police Officer Anthony Carelli, who said Chamberlain was lunging at White Plains Police Sgt. Keith Martin with a knife.
Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said the grand jury’s review of the case was “exhaustive,” and included more than 100 pieces of evidence and 42 witnesses, including Chamberlain family members and Carelli, who testified without immunity from prosecution.
“After due deliberation on the evidence presented in this matter the grand jury found that there was no reasonable cause to vote an indictment,” DiFiore said at a news briefing Thursday.
She called the case “a tragedy on many levels,” and said she had received assurances from White Plains police and city officials that the department “will be ordering a top to bottom review of the procedures and training regarding the use of force with respect to emotionally disturbed persons” – a review DiFiore said will be monitored by her office.
Nonetheless, Andrew Quinn, Carelli’s attorney, said he was satisfied that the District Attorney’s Office presentation to the grand jury was “fair and unbiased.”
He said Chamberlain spent the last 30 seconds of his life yelling, “shoot me, shoot me.” Even then, he said, Carelli hesitated until Chamberlain was within three feet of White Plains Police Sgt. Keith Martin, charging at him with a raised knife.
“We believe the evidence confirming Officer Carelli’s actions were justified was overwhelming,” Quinn said. “While it’s always tragic when a civilian loses his life, Officer Carelli’s actions in this matter were clearly justified.”
“As Officer Carelli has told us, while he deeply regrets Mr. Chamberlain’s death, he doesn’t regret his decision because he believes his decision saved Sgt. Martin’s life.”
White Plains Public Safety Commissioner David Chong added that he was “confident that they were presented with a factual and complete investigation by the district attorney.”
Police said Chamberlain was “emotionally disturbed” and screamed at the officers. They said officers feared that someone else might have been in the apartment and in danger. And autopsy later revealed that Chamberlain had been drinking.
Despite being shot with a stun gun and bean bags, police said, Chamberlain kept coming at them and was killed when Carelli fired a shot that went through Chamberlain’s arm and into his chest as he was about to stab an officer. Chamberlain died at White Plains Hospital two hours later.
Chong, the commissioner, said a few hours after the shooting that Chamberlain attacked officers with a hatchet and a knife and ignored orders to drop his weapons. He said the shooting appeared to have been justified and within department guidelines.
But Chamberlain family members, who were shown video and audio of the incident by the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office, said police taunted and used slurs against Chamberlain in a standoff that escalated until police broke down his door.
They said the video shows Chamberlain was unarmed, standing several feet from the door, with his hands at his sides. Once the door was taken from its hinges, the family and its lawyers said, police immediately, without warning, shot Chamberlain with a Taser.
The family has also said the medical examiner’s autopsy report’s description of the path of the bullet shows that he could not have been raising his arm to stab an officer when he was shot. Chamberlain family lawyers Randolph McLaughlin and Mayo Bartlett have notified the city of their intention to file a civil lawsuit in the case.
At a midday press conference outside the Westchester County Courthouse on Thursday, both attorneys lambasted the decision not to indict the officers, saying the only weapons Chamberlain could’ve had when he was shot were “common kitchen utensils.”
“The suggestion that they were defending themselves is not significant because they created the situation” by not leaving the apartment when Chamberlain expressed he was fine,” Bartlett said. “At no point did Mr. Chamberlain leave his apartment and attack anyone.”
McLaughlin, who learned of the grand jury decision while he was a guest on Journal News columnist Phil Reisman’s radio show, added that family members “believe there is a pattern and practice in White Plains that needs federal oversight.”
Herb Hadad, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Thursday that the office had no comment on the Chamberlain case or the Westchester grand jury’s decision.
Carelli is also among several officers who are defendants in a police brutality lawsuit in U.S. District Court in White Plains, which includes claims that he used racial slurs. Officer Steven Hart, who McLaughlin said shouted racial slurs at Chamberlain, is also a defendant in a federal brutality suit brought by a man who claims he was slammed to the ground during a 2010 arrest.
Both officers have denied the allegations.
On Thursday, DiFiore said a police officer did use a racial slur while trying to distract Chamberlain. She called it “offensive to the dignity of any one of us, to all of us.”
City PBA President Robert Riley said after the grand jury vote that “we mourn the tragic death of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. Every police officer’s worst nightmare is to be forced to take a life.”
But Riley also said he was troubled that evidence in the case had been released to Chamberlain family attorneys. He called the lawyers’ decision to make the evidence public “intentional, irresponsible and unethical,” and said doing so “put the lives of our officers and our community at risk.”
“We would call upon the District Attorney’s Office to re-evaluate the decision to allow the Chamberlain family attorneys access to evidence, after those attorneys, in our opinion, repeatedly demonstrated an utter disregard for the truth and recklessly inflamed this tragic incident,” he said.
Staff writer Jonathan Bandler contributed to this report.
