March 3, 2000
Giuliani Says Latest Bronx
Shooting by Police Isn't
Another
Diallo Case
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN and JUAN FORERO
The Bronx neighborhood where Amadou Diallo
died mourned yesterday for yet another unarmed
man who
died in a confrontation with the police, but
Mayor Rudolph
W. Giuliani cast the case as starkly
different,
saying the victim had a history of drug crimes,
was carrying
heroin and had fled from and struggled
with an
officer.
As the killing confronted
City Hall and New Yorkers
with new questions over
police conduct, Mr. Diallo's
parents and the Rev. Al
Sharpton met with Justice
Department officials in
Washington to press for the
filing of federal civil
rights charges against the four
officers acquitted in Mr.
Diallo's death a year ago.
Disputing new allegations
of overly aggressive police
tactics, Mr. Giuliani and
his senior police officials took
some pains yesterday to
reconstruct and explain the
death of Malcolm Ferguson,
23, who was killed
Wednesday night by a plainclothes
officer, Louis
Rivera, 33, at 1045 Boynton
Avenue, two blocks from
the doorway where Mr. Diallo
died.
Unlike Mr. Diallo, a black
man with no criminal record
who was standing in his
doorway and killed in a hail of
41 bullets by four white
officers who said they mistook
his wallet for a gun, Mr.
Ferguson, who had been in and
out of
jail, ran as officers approached him and
identified
themselves, and was shot once in the head as
he grappled
with the pursuing officer on a dark
stairway.
The police noted that Mr.
Ferguson was black, while
the officer who shot him
is Hispanic, and the four
officers with him at the
time included two white men
and two black men. Senior
police officials said that
there appeared to be no
racial implications in the case,
as critics saw in the Diallo
case.
"It was
a totally different situation," Mayor Giuliani
said. He
called the dead man "a serious criminal" with
nine prior
arrests and said: "The police have to arrest
drug dealers.
If police officers act in the line of duty to
protect
a community from violent criminals and drug
dealers,
then that community should stand up and
support
them."
But friends and relatives
of Mr. Ferguson disputed
aspects of the police version
of events, and expressed
anguish over what they called
the needless death of a
young man who was troubled
but not violent,
quiet-spoken, friendly,
easy-going, and even
trustworthy as a baby-sitter.
More than 200 people gathered
last night for a peaceful
protest outside the building
where Mr. Ferguson died.
And as candles flickered
over flowers banked in a
makeshift shrine on the
doorstep, an anguished mother,
Juanita Young, insisted
that her son's death was more
than a terrible accident,
and could not be justified by
his criminal record.
"They murdered
my son," she said in a brief interview.
"That's
it. They murdered my son. The mayor is going
to judge
a person just by what's on a piece of paper?
What they're
saying about him is a stone-faced lie. That
boy was
human, like you and me. They didn't have to
kill him."
There were signs taped to
the door, proclaiming,
"Malcolm we love you" and
"Justice for Malcolm.
Another bore the pictures
of people shot by the police
in New York in recent years.
"We're not here to fight
the police, we're here to
protest," one speaker shouted
as scores of officers stood
by silently.
According to the police,
Mr. Ferguson lived in the
South Bronx, but spent most
of his time with friends at
1045 Boynton Avenue, a four-storytenement.
It is
midway on a block of similar
buildings scarred by
decades of neglect and by
what the police call a culture
of drugs.
The police said they had
made 144 drug arrests on the
block since 1997, and 86
of them have been at 1045
Boynton. Within recent weeks,
after making several
heroin buys at the building,
undercover officers raided
a second-floor flat and
arrested Julio Reyes, 24, and
William Cadiz, 18, both
friends of Mr. Ferguson.
Mr. Reyes and Mr. Cadiz,
free on bail pending their
trials, had spent the afternoon
Wednesday with Mr.
Ferguson, and all three
were in the lobby together when
the events of the fatal
confrontation began to unfold, the
police said.
Officer Rivera, a police
officer since 1995 who has
had two unsubstantiated
civilian complaints and four
citations for excellent
or meritorious duty, is normally
assigned to the department's
housing division street
narcotics unit, but was
working Wednesday night with a
unit that patrols housing
projects on the lookout for drug
sales, public drinking or
other problems.
He and four other plainclothes
team members --
Officers Kevin Woods, Sean
Ianucci, Joel Brathwaite
and Kenneth Washington --
were walking to the Bronx
River Houses nearby and
were passing 1045 Boynton
about 6:20 p.m. when Officer
Ianucci saw three men
inside the doorway and signaled
that he had seen some
suspicious activity.
The door opened as Officer
Rivera approached,
apparently because someone
was exiting. Before the
door slammed shut, however,
Officer Rivera rushed
forward and squeezed in.
As he did so, the police said,
Mr. Ferguson bolted down
a 45-foot hallway.
While two other officers
entered and put Mr. Cadiz and
Mr. Reyes up against a wall
to frisk them, Officer
Rivera drew his gun, a 16-shot
Smith & Wesson
semiautomatic, and chased
Mr. Ferguson along the hall,
only steps behind.
A turn to the left at the
end of the hall brought the
fugitive and his pursuer
to the dark stairway. From that
point, Mr. Ferguson and
Officer Rivera were alone,
and could no longer be seen
by the others.
The two men raced up toward
the second floor. But
before reaching the second
floor, a struggle occurred
and Officer Rivera's gun
discharged once, the police
said. The bullet struck
Mr. Ferguson in the left temple,
and he slumped dead across
the top few steps, his right
arm draped over the black
and white tiles on the second
floor and his head slumped
toward the railing.
Officer Rivera, invoking
a right of police officers to
remain silent for 48 hours,
has not been interviewed
about what happened. But
investigators, going on
physical evidence at the
scene and accounts of two
witnesses in an adjacent
building who saw part of the
events through a window
on a landing, said that there
appeared to be little doubt
that Mr. Ferguson was killed
in a struggle.
The witnesses, they said,
saw the struggle, though not
the shooting.
----------------
March 3, 2000
Police Saw
a Drug Criminal;
Neighbors
Saw a Quiet Man
By KEVIN FLYNN
lthough
he lived several miles away, Malcolm
Ferguson had, for good or for bad, adopted
Boynton Avenue in the Bronx,
where he was shot by a
police officer on Wednesday
night, as his home.
Two or three days a week,
typically beginning in the
late morning, Mr. Ferguson
would hang out on the block
of brick apartment buildings
in the Soundview section,
residents said. He usually
stood in front of 1045
Boynton, often listening
to music on his headphones, at
times playing dice with
his friends, and often,
according to investigators,
dealing drugs.
Five times in the last five
years, Mr. Ferguson, 23, had
been arrested on the block
and charged with felony
drug crimes. Two of the
arrests occurred in the
four-story building in which
he was shot. The police
said there had been 86 drug-related
arrests in that
building in the last three
years.
Investigators said that on
Wednesday night, when the
police searched Mr. Ferguson's
body, they found six
packets of heroin hidden
in his clothes.
But if the police viewed
Mr. Ferguson as a haunting
presence, many residents
of Boynton Avenue said they
saw him as far from threatening.
They described him as
a quiet, easygoing man who
never carried weapons,
often carted groceries for
people and took to selling
drugs as a last resort in
a difficult life.
"He was
not a problem," said Pura Purvis, 20, who
said she
was a friend of Mr. Ferguson's. "He was quiet.
He did
not bother nobody. He just did what he had to
do to survive,
to get money."
Amy Lopez,
38, a nurse who lives in the building
where Mr.
Ferguson was shot, said: "He had a record,
big deal.
They shot him like he was a dog."
Mr. Ferguson had been arrested
nine times, the first
time for burglary in 1994,
when he was 17. He served
three separate terms, the
longest one seven months, in
state prison. During his
first term, he enrolled in a
shock incarceration program,
a military-style boot
camp for offenders in Monterey,
N.Y. But four months
after graduating in August
1996, he was arrested on
drug-related charges.
Mr. Ferguson was incarcerated
two subsequent times
when the authorities revoked
his parole after his arrest
on drug charges. His latest
prison term ended in
January when he was released
from a city jail after
serving three months. He
was still on parole when he
was shot.
Mr. Ferguson's most recent
arrest occurred last Friday
when he was charged with
disorderly conduct at a
demonstration protesting
the acquittal of the four police
officers who shot Amadou
Diallo. "Malcolm had a
conscience, and that's the
reason he participated in the
nonviolent Diallo protests,"
said Luther Williams, a
lawyer representing the
Ferguson family.
Mr. Williams said the police
mistreated Mr. Ferguson
last year, when his hand
was broken while he was
being handcuffed at the
43rd Precinct station house.
"The police ignored his
injury," he said. "It wasn't until
he got to the Bronx House
of Detention when
corrections officers noticed
and sent him to the
hospital." The police would
not comment because they
said the accusation was
part of a pending lawsuit.
None of Mr. Ferguson's arrests
were for violent crimes,
although the authorities
said he had been involved in
two prison fights for which
he was punished with
confinement to his cell
and a loss of privileges.
Although drugs are a problem
on Boynton Avenue
(there have been 144
drug-related arrests on the block
since 1997, the police
said), many residents defended
Mr. Ferguson.
"He was a cool guy," said
Jose Augustin, 21. "He was
always around the building
when we came out and
stuff. He never started
trouble. When he'd see me
coming down the street
with my baby and the carriage,
he'd help me."
Often Mr. Ferguson spent
time watching music videos
with friends in the second-floor
apartment of the
building where he was shot.
"He used to sit there in the
corner and play with the
kids, and wouldn't say a
word," Louise Classen said.
Ms. Classen's cousin, Libertad
Franco, said Mr.
Ferguson was so gentle she
had named him the
godfather of her 3-year-old
daughter, for whom he
routinely bought things,
like a stroller and clothes.
"He was always there for me," said Ms. Franco, 22.
But even those who described
themselves as Mr.
Ferguson's close friends
could not say how he had
made his money. The police
said they executed a search
warrant in Ms. Classen's
apartment last month and
recovered 95 packets of
heroin. They also arrested two
men, Julio Reyes and William
Cadiz, who were with
Mr. Ferguson just before
he was shot.
Mr. Ferguson's own home was
a five-story walkup on
East 135th Street in the
Bronx, overlooking the
Bruckner Expressway, where
he lived with his mother,
Juanita Young, his two sisters
and one of his two
brothers. "The boy was human
like you and me," his
mother said last night.
"They didn't have to kill him."
Several friends described
Mr. Ferguson as "slow,"
saying that he often spoke
in a halting manner and
sometimes had a hard time
remembering things. But
school officials said he
had attended Adlai Stevenson
High School for several
years and had received his
high school equivalency
diploma in 1996. Mr.
Williams said that Mr. Ferguson
had been talking about
going back to school to
become a paralegal.
One former employer, Michael
Bharath, 25, said that
Mr. Ferguson had spent a
year washing cars at his
former business, Bronx Auto
Spa, about two years ago.
"He was a very nice kid.
He wouldn't bother anybody,"
Mr. Bharath said. "This
is the projects, but that doesn't
make them animals. It doesn't
make them killers."