PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION

Botched Raid a Rude Awakening for Local Man

By JORDAN MOSS

The death of city employee Alberta Spruill, caused when officers burst into her Harlem apartment with a percussion grenade on May 16, raised questions about the Police Department's controversial use of confidential informants. 

Since then, several incidents of botched "no knock" police raids, as they are known, have come to light. 

One of them happened in North Fordham on April 25. Eugenio Rodriguez, a 72-year-old retired doorman, was asleep in his apartment at 219 E.196th St., when he was roused from his sleep by a thundering noise. 

"I thought a bomb or a plane hit the buildings," said Rodriguez, who came to New York from his hometown of San German, Puerto Rico in 1953.

What it was turned out to be almost as frightening. Police officers, Rodriguez said, knocked down the door to his apartment. Neighbors said they overheard cops saying they thought it was the home of a Jamaican drug dealer who reportedly possessed guns and bombs. 

As a frightened Rodriguez made his way to the door barefoot, wearing an undershirt and sweatpants, officers put one gun to his head and another to his chest and elbowed him in the shoulder and the face to push him backwards, he recalled. They later handcuffed him and made him stand in the hallway with his face to the wall for an hour. Rodriguez said he has blurred vision in one eye as a result of the elbowing. He said he had to take an extra dose of nitroglycerine for his heart after the incident.

Monsignor John Jenik, the activist pastor of the Roman Catholic Our Lady of Refuge Church a couple of blocks away, has taken up Rodriguez' cause by writing letters to city police and government officials seeking an independent investigation. Through numerous calls to police officials, Jenik said he was able to determine that the officers were from the 47th Precinct, not from the area's 52nd Precinct. 

The Police Department would not comment on a case involving pending litigation, but Det. Kevin Czartoryski, a Police Department spokesman, said, "We take any allegation of excessive force seriously." He added that the "whole no-knock policy is being reviewed." 

Rodriguez is suing the city. His lawyer, Kevin Murphy, said he is seeking compensation for his client's injuries and suffering, and that his rights were violated. "It's a serious Fourth Amendment violation when you knock someone's door down without a proper warrant," Murphy said.

Rodriguez is scheduled to give a deposition to the city on Aug. 15.

"I would expect [the city], after reviewing the facts, to make a settlement offer," Murphy said. "I don't think they'd want this case to go to a jury of his peers." 

After the Spruill tragedy, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields opened a hotline for no-knock complaints and held a public hearing, which yielded testimony from dozens of New Yorkers of all backgrounds who had similar tales to tell of no-knocks gone bad. 

Fields is calling for the introduction of several reforms including: creating clear guidelines and retraining all officers in no-knock warrant procedures; assigning judges in each county to scrutinize warrant requests and ensure all warrants include documentation to support informants' claims; and requiring Emergency Medical Service teams to be on-site during execution of the warrant. 

Fields pointed to the "lack of coordination" among the police, district attorneys' offices and judges, and wants to see the appointment of a small group of judges who are allowed to issue warrants. 

For its part, the Police Department appears to recognize that it makes many errors in the execution of warrants. Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly testified at a June City Council hearing on the matter that, of the 13,000 warrants issued between Januar 2002 and May 2003, most of which were of the no-knock variety, about 10 percent or 1,300 netted no evidence or arrests. 

In the case of Eugenio Rodriguez, Jenik and others in the neighborhood say they just don't understand how police can make such a drastic mistake.

"[They're] looking for a Jamaican guy with dreadlocks [and] they come up with a 72-year-old with a heart condition, diabetes and a pacemaker," Jenik remarked. 

Jenik thinks the case hasn't attracted much media scrutiny because, unlike Spruill, 
Rodriguez survived.

"That's the key," Jenik said. "He did not die."