Siding with the cop’s attorney, who called the shooting a “tragic accident,” the jury deliberated for 35 minutes before making its decision.

The cop, Richard Neri, claimed he did not remember firing his weapon. He and his partner, both members of the city housing police unit, had entered the building in the middle of the night on what are routine “patrols.” They were on a rooftop walkway that connects the building to an adjacent one. Stansbury, who was attending a friend’s birthday party, came up the building’s stairs to cross the roof to another apartment. As Stansbury stepped through the door to the roof, Neri, whose gun was drawn, immediately fired and killed him.

Press reports sought to put a human face on the cop who killed the unarmed youth, making special mention of Neri’s tear-filled testimony to the grand jury. Pointing to his “clean” 12-year record, the press glowingly described him as a “family man.”

“Those tears weren’t real,” said Timothy Stansbury, Sr., the slain youth’s father, to a gathering outside the city police headquarters three days after the jury’s verdict. “A month ago I had a son, and now he is gone because of this man.”

“I don’t want him to face anything but jail,” Irene Clayburne, Stansbury Jr.’s grandmother, told New York Newsday. “He had no right getting off like this.”

Referring to the city administration, she added, “They just wanted to have this whole thing fixed so that this officer could get off.”

The administration of former mayor Rudolph Giuliani faced a crisis as the popular response to brutal police killings—alongside the city government’s efforts to criminalize victims of police brutality and whitewash the cops—drew thousands into the streets in a series of protests. These actions culminated in sustained mass demonstrations demanding justice in the killing of West African immigrant Amadou Diallo in February 1999, who was slain in a hail of 41 police bullets.

To head off similar popular mobilizations, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg adopted a different tactic in response to Stansbury’s killing. Within a day of the fatal shooting, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the shooting was “unjustified,” drawing praise from prominent opponents of police brutality in the city. The mayor followed suit, turning up for the young man’s funeral and addressing the crowd.

Following the grand jury’s decision, the mayor told the press that Neri “had his day in court” and “we have a system of laws, and they’ve made their ruling.”

With these actions, city authorities succeeded in first deflating any outburst of street protests by giving the appearance of siding with the victim of cop racism and brutality. Then, by putting the blame for letting the killer cop go scot-free on a faceless grand jury, they deflected responsibility and built on their initial success of dampening the prospect of a popular explosion. No major protests have taken place since the cop was absolved of wrongdoing.

The only such action was a February 20 picket line by some 40 people at police headquarters in Manhattan organized by the December 12th Movement, a Black nationalist group based in Harlem. Timothy Stansbury, Sr. spoke briefly at this rally.

In an editorial in the February 19 Newsday titled, “Grand Jury Decision Reasonable in Shooting Case,” the daily labeled the killing a “lapse.” It added, “The grand jury only said that the shooting failed to rise to the level of a crime. It did not declare the shooting justified.”

Kelly has continued to defend the cops’ practice of poking around working-class communities and apartment buildings with loaded guns drawn. “You can’t micromanage or direct every situation,” he said in a January 24 radio interview. “It is a personal judgment that has to be made in many, many cases.”

“They come through here and they take these boys and they slam them against the wall,” said Stansbury’s grandmother, referring to the “standard police procedures” followed by the cops in the predominately Black neighborhood. She said she would protest the jury decision “if I have to walk [in demonstrations] by myself.”

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said her office had begun “a thorough review of the evidence” to determine whether Neri will face federal charges for violating Timothy Stansbury, Jr.’s civil rights.  
 
 
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