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Dick Haste, the NYPD officer who shot and killed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham after chasing him into his grandmother's apartment over an alleged weed purchase, was indicted by a grand jury on charges of manslaughter. A judge threw out that indictment earlier this year because the prosecutor did not inform the grand jury that Haste's colleagues told him (wrongly) that Graham was armed. Prosecutors vowed to seek a new indictment, but a grand jury has now declined to do that. NBC New York reports that the Bronx DA said he was "surprised and shocked" by the decision and that the dismissal of the original indictment was an "overly cautious" act by the judge.
We spoke to a Bronx councilman last month who has been pressing the Ramarley Graham issue; he would not admit that the war on drugs played a role in the teen's death, preferring to focus exclusively on "racial profiling" even as he and other politicians want more police on their streets to combat "drug abuse".
The Graham family has a pending lawsuit against the NYPD.
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