{"id":6656,"date":"2012-02-10T00:10:26","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T00:09:12","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T00:09:12","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=6656","title":{"rendered":"HuffPo.com: “Ramarley Graham, Unarmed Teen, Illegally Killed By New York Police, Lawyer Says”"},"content":{"rendered":"

HuffPo.com: Ramarley Graham, Unarmed Teen, Illegally Killed By New York Police, Lawyer Says<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A week after police shot to death an unarmed 18-year-old in his grandmother’s Bronx apartment, questions continue to swirl around the aggressive police tactics that led to the fatal confrontation.<\/p>\n

Ramarley Graham died last Thursday after Richard Haste, 30, a New York police officer, kicked down the door of his grandmother’s apartment and shot Graham in the chest while he attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet. Graham was unarmed and police did not have a warrant to enter the home.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Emdin, an attorney representing Graham’s mother, also called the police tactics unlawful. “They illegally entered the home,” Emdin said. “They had no right to be inside. They had no right to use force.”<\/p>\n

Many linked the shooting to the NYPD’s aggressive street policing program, called “stop-and-frisk,” which predominantly targets low-income minority neighborhoods. In 2011, the program stopped and searched more than 500,000 New Yorkers, 85 percent of them black or Latino. The searches contributed to a record number of misdemeanor marijuana arrests last year.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

John Wesley Hall, a criminal defense attorney in Little Rock, Ark. who has argued cases involving police searches before the Supreme Court, said a police suspicion that Graham might be carrying an illegal handgun was insufficient justification for breaking down his door. <\/p>\n

“If they thought he had a gun, they should have stopped him on the street and not waited for him to go inside,” Hall said. “Any reasonable officer would have known that they needed a warrant to get into the house.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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