NEWSDAY
DA: Freeport cops justified in shooting man
BY ANN GIVENS |
6:55 PM EDT, September 19, 2007
Two Freeport police officers were justified in repeatedly shooting a 21-year-old man after he aimed a gun at them, a Nassau district attorney's investigation has found.
The investigation report, which was released Wednesday, concluded that Officers Kenneth Endo and Timothy Nolan acted appropriately in shooting Frantz Byer after they said Byer pointed a revolver at Nolan on July 14.
Byer, a Freeport resident who was hit five times in the legs and buttocks, has said through his lawyer that he was holding a bottle, not a gun, when the officers shot him. He was originally charged with assault and robbery, but those charges were later reduced to criminal possession of a weapon and menacing police.
His case is still pending in Nassau County Court.
According to the report, Endo and Nolan approached Byer just after 1 a.m. in response to a 911 call saying that a man fitting Byers' description was "playing around" with a gun while walking with friends on Leonard Avenue.
Byers ran when the officers approached him, police said. He then stopped, pulled what Nolan believed to be a gun out of a black pouch, and pointed it at Nolan, the report said.
Pieces of a revolver were found at the crime scene, the district attorney's office report said. Forensic investigators said in the report that blood found on the pavement where Byers was shot matched DNA found on rounds from the gun found at the scene, leading them to believe the gun was his, the report said.
Byers' lawyer, Fredrick Brewington of Hempstead, said the district attorney's report is far from objective. He said five witnesses in the case made statements supporting Byers's innocence. Those witnesses would speak to a grand jury, but not to prosecutors, he said.
"They've decided to issue a report in a prophylactic attempt to avoid looking at real facts," he said of prosecutors.
Freeport police officials declined to comment. This is the first time that District Attorney Kathleen Rice has ordered an investigation into a police shooting since she took office nearly two years ago.
"These are serious incidents," she said. "The public deserves to know that no stone goes unturned and that no theory goes unexplored and that they will have full access to the findings."