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Witness
says cops started fight that led to shooting | Giuliani
Caused Dorismond Funeral Riot | Patrick
Dorismond's Sister Answers Mayor Giuliani (April 5, 2000)
Patrick Dorismond
Witness says cops started
fight that led to shooting
Wednesday, March 22, 2000,
The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- A co-worker of Patrick Dorismond's
renewed his allegations Tuesday that undercover narcotics officers
started the fight that resulted in the fatal shooting of the
unarmed black man outside a midtown Manhattan bar.
Kevin Kaiser, who claims to
be the only civilian eyewitness to the controversial shooting,
told reporters the tragedy unfolded after "three men who
appeared like derelicts approached us for weed."
The two off-duty security guards
told the men to go away, Kaiser said. But one -- an officer he
identified as Anderson Moran -- taunted them with snarling sounds
before the shooter, Detective Anthony Vasquez, assaulted Dorismond,
he said.
"I saw Detective Vasquez
throw the first punch at my friend, Patrick Dorismond,"
said Kaiser, reading from a statement at a Brooklyn news conference
with the Rev. Al Sharpton and announcing a wrongful arrest claim
against the city. "Patrick did nothing to cause the officer
to strike him. At or about the same time, I heard the gun go
off."
Kaiser, 22, of Queens, said
the officers, all dressed in street clothes, never identified
themselves as police. After Dorismond was shot, he added, he
heard one of the officers say, "Cuff that shot [expletive]."
Kaiser is Hispanic.
The shooting last week of Dorismond,
26, a Brooklyn native of Haitian descent -- coupled with city
officials' decision to defend the shooting by making public his
record of petty crime -- has outraged black activists, the victim's
family, and members of the city's Haitian community. It also
has fueled political sniping between Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and
Hillary Rodham Clinton in their race for the U.S. Senate.
Campaigning Monday night in
Harlem, Clinton said Giuliani has "led the rush to judgment.
That is not real leadership." Other Democrats have charged
that City Hall broke state law by releasing information from
a sealed juvenile case against the victim.
"In releasing Patrick
Dorismond's juvenile record, Mayor Giuliani has violated the
public trust, Mayor Giuliani has violated state law, Mayor Giuliani
has let down the people of the state of New York," Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver said.
After the shooting, Giuliani
released Dorismond's criminal record, including a previously
sealed juvenile offense. In defending the disclosure of that
record, city lawyer Michael Hess said when a person dies his
or her "right to privacy is eliminated."
"The law is when you die,
your privacy interest ends," Giuliani said Tuesday.
Silver disagreed, and said
the Assembly would immediately convene hearings in New York City
or Albany to find out how Giuliani and the New York City Police
Department got hold of and released Dorismond's sealed juvenile
records, a move he called "reprehensible" and "egregious."
Meanwhile, City Council Speaker
Peter Vallone, under fire for not speaking out sooner, wrote
the mayor a letter saying he was "deeply troubled by your
release of sealed records that are irrelevant to the tragic death
of Patrick Dorismond."
Giuliani refused to back down.
The mayor accused Clinton of
trying to "use [the shooting] as a campaign issue. . . .
What she did last night was entirely political." He also
fed reporters new details about Dorismond's brushes with the
law, including a March 7 incident in which he allegedly punched
his girlfriend on the side of the head while she was holding
the couple's 1-year-old child.
"I am giving you facts
that you resist printing," Giuliani said. "That Mr.
Dorismond spent a good deal of his adult life punching people
is a fact."
Silver denied any collusion
with Clinton.
"This is not about Mrs.
Clinton. This is not about a Senate campaign," Silver said
angrily at a state capitol news conference. "This is about
the highest elected official in the city of New York having the
perception out in the public and being proud of violating the
law."
Silver said he had not invited
any members of the Republican-controlled Senate to participate
in the hearings. "I think if the Senate thinks as we do,
they will hold their own hearings or ask to join our hearings,"
he said.
Giuliani Caused Dorismond
Funeral Riot
by Robert Lederman, March
25, 2000
I marched in the Patrick Dorismond
Funeral procession from the funeral home on Flatbush Avenue to
the front of the Holy Cross Church and was at the exact flash
point where the violence initially took place at the barricaded
corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues. Until the procession reached
that intersection it was totally peacefull and non-violent. I
left the area about twenty minutes later immediately after the
casket was brought into the church when it became obvious that
blood was going to flow in the street. What caused the violence
to erupt and who it was designed to benefit, rather than how
many bottles were thrown and how many were arrested or injured,
are the questions that need to be answered.
Media coverage of the march
has almost completely focused on images and descriptions of barricades
and bottles being thrown and of a U.S. flag being burned. I believe
the violence was carefully orchestrated to take place at that
exact location in order to eclipse the intense political nature
of the march. The media had a massive presence at that spot including
photographers and video crews that had been allowed by the police
to set up on rooftops on either side of the street. How many
times before have we seen the media exploit images of "terrorists"
burning a flag to incite public opinion in support of military
intervention? Remember also how many times the media showed a
handful out of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters breaking
windows in Seattle last year to justify a military style police
response.
I've been in as well as led
a lot of anti-Giuliani marches and protests but this one was
unique in that a group of thousands of Black New Yorkers were
unanimous in their bitter denunciation of Mayor Giuliani. The
single portrait of the Mayor as Hitler which I carried was just
one of hundreds of Giuliani as Hitler portraits and intensely
anti-Giuliani signs in the march. The chants, many of which were
in French, were all about the Mayor and the urgency of his being
removed from office. If there had been no violence the coverage
would have had to focus entirely on the political message, which
would have been devastating for Giuliani.
There were no barricades set
up along the entire length of Flatbush Avenue on the route between
the funeral home and the church which is atypical of Giuliani/NYPD
procedure. Marchers were allowed by the police to walk in the
street and on the sidewalk without interference. As the column
reached the corner of Flatbush and Church Avenues the situation
was entirely different. The street was completely closed off
by rows of hundreds of heavy steel barricades. Barricades lined
the sidewalks and almost completely blocked off the entrance
to the street. Behind the barricades were hundreds of police
officers. The marchers were stopped at the entrance to the street
and held there for no apparent reason. Vehicular traffic had
been banned hours earlier and there was no traffic of any kind
justifying the holding up of the column. From my perspective
there was no reason whatsoever to stop and hold the procession
at that point as they were finally in sight of the church other
than to antagonize the marchers.
Two young black males at the
front suddenly picked up barricades and tossed them at the police.
As the foremost obstacle was removed the crowd surged through
the opening pushed along like a stream of water by the built
up human pressure behind them. The same two young men that had
initially tossed the barricades proceeded to systematically move
down the street turning over barricade after barricade with the
police standing right there doing nothing whatsoever to stop
them and not even verbally warning them. As someone who has been
falsely arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and even
inciting a riot simply for holding up a cardboard sign I know
this is not normal NYPD procedure. In my opinion, these young
men were exactly what NYPD Commissioner Safir called them in
an article in this Sunday's NY Post POST 3/26/2000 SAFIR RAPS
RIOTERS AS 'THUGS' AND OUTSIDERS "The protesters who clashed
with cops after Patrick Dorismond's funeral were outsiders "ginned
up by demagogues trying to pursue their own agendas," Police
Commissioner Howard Safir charged yesterday."
What Safir neglected to mention
was that these young men were doing political work for Safir's
boss, the demagogue Rudy Giuliani. I've seen this exact same
Giuliani technique at work a number of times. During the busiest
day of the Diallo protests at the Bronx courthouse last year
a black man got into the middle of the protesters and began urging
them to attack the police, set fires and initiate violence. Not
one person in the crowd responded to him other than to call him
a police plant and order him to leave. He continued his harangue
for almost 20 minutes with numerous police officers listening
in and doing nothing despite the legal fact that the man was
blatantly committing a felony, inciting to riot. The man was
well dressed and appeared completely normal. Despite the inflamatory
nature of his words he appeared calm, composed and professional.
It's a historical fact that Mayor Giuliani has personal expertise
in inciting riots as his performance on the steps of City Hall
during the 1993 Mayoral campaign demonstrated.
Until the confrontation at
the barricaded entrance to Church Avenue the march was dignified,
peaceful and one hundred percent political. The marchers appeared
to be mostly well-dressed middle class Haitians and certainly
didn't appear to be looking for any kind of trouble let alone
to be involved in a violent riot. Many had little children with
them. After the march reached the barricaded corner it became
violent, chaotic and totally lost its political message, degenerating
into a meaningless battle between the cops and the marchers.
This outcome exactly supports Giuliani's Manhattan Institute
Eugenics-inspired ideology that Dorismond and all Black people
are violent, genetically inferior and must be surpressed at all
times by a massive police presence.
It must be remembered that
Giuliani has a Haitian connection that predates the Abner Louima
and Dorismond incidents. As the # three official in the Reagan
Justice Department Rudy Giuliani visited Haiti, met with Duvalier
and bizzarely declared that there was no political repression
in Haiti.
If it can be proven that those
who started throwing the barricades were not simply hotheads
but were either NYPD agents working on behalf of the Mayor to
disrupt the march or Haitians connected to repressive right-wing
elements in Haiti that are available to work with Giuliani, and
that the street was closed off in order to start a riot rather
than to prevent one, then Mayor Giuliani and Commissioner Safir
must be charged with some very serious crimes. Not only are these
crimes against the people of New York City but in a sense they
are even more crimes against the NYPD. If Giuliani and Safir
are inciting riots against their own police in which officers
are going to be injured or possibly killed, the NYPD's various
unions must do more than mouthing soundbites about how restrained
the police were and how many injuries they sustained. These officers
have a right to know if the Mayor is making a dangerous job more
dangerous just to protect his political image.
Robert
Lederman is an artist,
a regular columnist for the Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/
for an extensive archive of Lederman columns]
Patrick Dorismond's Sister
Answers Mayor Giuliani
By Robert Lederman
Last night, 4/5/2000, a lengthy
interview was broadcast that was so unusual I suspected something
must be wrong with my TV. Had a higher power taken control of
a local television station in order to brighten the spiritual
darkness surrounding New York City? The novelty I was seeing
and hearing was unaffected honesty, clarity, dignity and truth
in the person of Patrick Dorismond's sister. How different the
debate would be if this City had a single elected official or
leader who could express themselves as honestly and truthfully
as this young woman.
Sitting beside her grieving
mother and interviewed by NY1's Dominick Carter, Marie Dorismond
in six minutes did more to refute the past six years of Giuliani's
lies than all the commentators, protesters and rallies in the
world could ever do. Her words were superbly intelligent, devoid
of spin and deeply moving. These were not the stale slogans and
politically correct sloganeering that divides as it pretends
to unite and inspire.
If this exceptional young woman
is his sister, what must Patrick Dorismond have been like? Was
he the violent thug, the petty criminal Mayor Giuliani claims
spent his life punching people? Hearing his mother, sister and
father one can only surmise that he was exactly the kind of good
friend, helpful neighbor and loving father that any of us might
hope to have as a son or brother.
Among the Mayor's many desperate
lies about Patrick Dorismond is that he was no altar boy. As
is often the case, what the Mayor publicly says is 180 degrees
from the truth. Dorismond was in fact an altar boy. Even more
ironically, like Giuliani himself, Patrick Dorismond was a student
at Bishop Laughlin, a strict Catholic High School in Brooklyn.
When Giuliani attended Bishop
Laughlin its student body was for the most part White. As the
neighborhood's racial makeup changed, the Giuliani family fled
Brooklyn for the White enclaves of Staten Island, which today
is the only Borough in NYC where the Mayor remains popular. Nowadays
Bishop Laughlin is predominantly Black and many of the students
are children of Haitian immigrants like the Dorismonds. These
children's parents sacrifice each day to send them to an expensive
private school rather than the City's totally free public schools
because they want to give them the best possible chance to succeed
in life-a chance the Mayor seems intent on systematically destroying.
These are the young people
Giuliani's Operation Condor and the Street Crimes Unit are racially
profiling, slamming into walls and illegally searching each night.
These are the children who are learning to loath and fear the
sight of police officers, the children who have to practice how
to reach for their I.D. without appearing to be reaching for
a weapon. These are the children that the Mayor's right wing
CIA initiated think tank, The Manhattan Institute, believe to
be genetically and mentally inferior and inclined by their very
genes to follow a life of crime; the ones the Mayor thinks need
to be taught a lesson in civility by periodically brutalizing,
arresting and sending through the criminal in-justice system.
Patrick Dorismond's mother,
also named Marie, is a nurse in a New York City hospital, the
kind of poor people's hospital the Mayor wants to privatize or
eliminate altogether in order to pass the money on to the investment
bankers and real estate moguls that are pulling his strings.
She considers herself to be working for the same administration
that killed her son, sullied his name and made a mockery of his
funeral. It horrifies her that she works for a local government
that dissected and desecrated her son's body without asking the
family for permission in the hope they'd find a trace of drugs
and that, in her words, killed him a second time by trying to
destroy his reputation. It's certainly possible that the police
officer who fired the fatal shot did so by accident. Unlike that
tragic error, the Mayor's assassination of Patrick Dorismond's
character has been nothing less than cold-blooded, pre-meditated
murder.
Asked if she'd be willing to
meet with the Mayor, Dorismond's mother sadly shook her head
and said no, it was too late, that she'd meet Giuliani before
God on Judgment Day. It's a good thing that eternity, unlike
the Mayor's busy schedule of soft money fundraising and censored
press conferences, has no time constraints, because it seems
there could be a very long line of wronged parents, children
and friends of his victims waiting there to have a word with
him.
Giuliani, who never misses
an opportunity to associate his perversely racist administration
with the prayers of Cardinals and Ministers, Rabbis and Imams
probably imagines himself to be doing God's work on this earth,
a modern day Savaranola torturing sinners in his Central Booking
dungeon and burning violators of his quality of life gospel at
the stake. Like his new political soulmate John McCain, a man
who still insists on calling the Vietnamese farmers he was shot
down while bombing Gooks, Giuliani is unshakably certain his
way is always and forever right.
There is a direct connection
between that misbegotten war and what is happening here in New
York City. The corporate-sponsored psychopaths who were the architects
of the Vietnam War, like Henry Kissenger and his associates in
the CIA, are literally the same people advising and directing
Giuliani's war on the people of New York City today. It's no
small irony that John McCain is a true believer in both of these
misguided wars.
The collateral damage of the
Mayor's policies includes the bodies of young black and Latino
males accidentally shot by special police units methodically
filling their nightly quota of arrests for marijuana possession
and loitering in one's own doorway. These deaths, like the body
counts in Vietnam, are mere statistics to this Mayor, bumps on
the road to higher office that can be smoothed over by leaking
reports that he's kneeling in prayer and meeting with Black ministers.
Patrick Dorismond's family,
and in particular his sister, are a shining light that can penetrate
the foul darkness of Mayor Giuliani's lies. We can only hope
that many other media outlets will have the courage to give this
woman the same opportunity to clear her brother's name that they've
given the Mayor to dishonor it.
Robert Lederman is an artist,
a regular columnist for the Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/
for an extensive archive of Lederman columns] The Shadow, The
Vigo-Examiner [see:http://www.vigo-examiner.com/archive.htm]
and Street News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays
concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters have
appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News, Newsday, Brooklyn
Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily Challenge, Amsterdam News,
Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town, NY Press and are available on hundreds
of websites around the world. Lederman has been falsely arrested
41 times to date for his anti-Giuliani activities and has never
been convicted of any of the charges. He is best known for creating
hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
Robert Lederman, President
of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) ARTISTpres@aol.com
(718) 743-3722 Also see: http://www.levymultimedia.com/lederman/index.htm
for Lederman's essays on Malathion and the spraying of insecticides
on NYC [scroll down the menu to the items highlighted in blue].
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
