Judge Shreds Cop’s Credibility Thanks To Video Clip In Case Of Drill Rapper’s Gun Injuring Officer

New York Mayor Eric Adams and the New York Police Department are under fire after a Bronx judge found incon­sis­ten­cies in a police officer’s recount of a drill rapper’s arrest that end­ed with a sus­pect and an offi­cer shot this year. NYPD offi­cer Taulant Gjonbalaj said they approached 16-year old Camrin’ C Blu’ Williams after he ignored their orders to remove his hands from his pock­ets dur­ing the Jan. 18 encounter.

Gjonbalaj alleged Williams start­ed fight­ing one of the offi­cers when they respond­ed to a “dis­or­der­ly crowd” in a Bronx neigh­bor­hood. The offi­cer said Williams’ gun went off in his pock­et dur­ing the scuf­fle strik­ing Officer Kaseem Pennant in the leg and Williams in the groin. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Naita Semaj said dur­ing a March 8 hear­ing that Gjonbalaj’s tes­ti­mo­ny runs counter to video footage of the inci­dent. Semaj said even though Williams, who has a his­to­ry of gun charges, was ille­gal­ly pos­sess­ing a weapon, author­i­ties had no rea­son to search the teen. She said Williams raised his hand when he was ordered and com­plied with offi­cers before being roughed up by Gjonbalaj and Pennant, which led to the gun’s acci­den­tal firing.

“He lit­er­al­ly does every­thing you tell your child to do when they’re approached by cops. He lit­er­al­ly kept his hands up. He lit­er­al­ly tried to record to make sure there was proof. He answered ques­tions he had no oblig­a­tion to answer,” Semaj said.
The judge ruled the rap­per, who recent­ly signed a deal with Interscope Records, be tried as a juve­nile and not an adult. The rul­ing received instant back­lash from the NYPD and Adams, who has been a loud crit­ic of drill music. Williams used an advance from the record deal to pay his $250,000 bail. “I agree with the judge that there is no deny­ing Mr. Williams had an ille­gal gun on him that night — a gun that end­ed up injur­ing both him and a police offi­cer,” said Adams, a for­mer NYPD cap­tain. “This was Mr. Williams’ sec­ond gun-relat­ed arrest and exact­ly the rea­son why we need to work to get guns off the streets.”

Drill music is often cat­e­go­rized by its vio­lent lyrics. The hip-hop sub­genre orig­i­nat­ed in Chicago, where the slang word “drill” report­ed­ly means to kill or mur­der. The may­or has crit­i­cized the music for its asso­ci­a­tion with a string of mur­ders in the city and has called for an inter­net ban of drill music videos that depict gang violence.
However, Adams report­ed­ly walked back the com­ments after meet­ing with drill rap­pers last month.
Adams said he was con­cerned about “vio­lent peo­ple who are using drill rap­ping to post who they killed, and then antag­o­nize the peo­ple who they are going to kill.” He vowed to work with the group of rap­pers, led by Maino, after the Feb. 15 meet­ing, but no fur­ther announce­ments have been made… Williams’ release on bond reignit­ed a push by Adams for stricter bond restrictions.

Under cur­rent New York law, cash bail is grant­ed for vio­lent felonies based on a suspect’s risk of flight. Adams believes a suspect’s “dan­ger­ous­ness” should also be con­sid­ered in deter­min­ing bail. While Semaj slammed the NYPD offi­cer for his “self-serv­ing” tes­ti­mo­ny, com­mu­ni­ty advo­cates said Adams owes res­i­dents an apol­o­gy after the judge’s rul­ing. “The may­or wrong­ly blamed bail reform for the release of a 16-year-old. Now, unsur­pris­ing­ly, we learn that the police fab­ri­cat­ed the cir­cum­stances lead­ing up to the inci­dent,” Marvin Mayfield, a direc­tor at the Center for Community Alternatives, said. “Video proved that this young per­son was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly assault­ed, and it is now clear that he was the only per­son seri­ous­ly injured as a result of police action.” Daily News reporters said the police depart­ment and the may­or dodged direct ques­tions about Gjonbalaj’s testimony.

Deputy Commissioner of Public Information John Miller said the NYPD dis­agrees with Semaj and intends “to lit­i­gate this case in the court­room.” “A 16-year-old and a police offi­cer were each shot and wound­ed in this inci­dent. The bul­let came from a gun being car­ried by a teenag­er who was released in a pri­or gun arrest. The offi­cers were on patrol that night for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing our cit­i­zens safe. Those are the most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of this case,” Miller said. “This is dan­ger­ous work, but the intent is to fos­ter peace and achieve just out­comes for all New Yorkers whether they are vic­tims, wit­ness­es, or young peo­ple who make wrong deci­sions to car­ry firearms.”(This sto­ry first appeared in the Atlanta Black Star)

The Lame-stream media sim­ply gob­bles up the script­ed police ver­sion of events and ran with it as if it was gospel. Is there any won­der that no-one cares about what is said on tele­vi­sion anymore?

Publisher’s note
I guess all of the abuse met­ed out to the young offend­er is jus­ti­fied if we sub­scribe to John Miller’s log­ic. By his log­ic, the end jus­ti­fies the means…because to them (police) it is a war and war is ugly, as is evi­denced by his com­ments; “The offi­cers were on patrol that night for the sole pur­pose of keep­ing our cit­i­zens safe. Those are the most crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant ele­ments of this case,” Miller said.
Not the fact that his offi­cers roughed up a teenag­er then lied about the sequence of events and the mate­r­i­al tenets of the case.“This is dan­ger­ous work,” mean­ing police may use what­ev­er tools they deem nec­es­sary to achieve the out­comes they desire.
John Miller has every right to defend his offi­cers, par­tic­u­lar­ly when a repeat offend­er is bailed and caught with a gun which end­ed up injur­ing a cop. I also under­stand the Mayor’s desire to have a safer city as well.
The thing that police offi­cers and blind zealots fail to under­stand is that the laws must be enforced with­out abro­gat­ing and vio­lat­ing the rights of cit­i­zens and that goes for crim­i­nal sus­pects as well.
We can­not have a soci­ety where police offi­cers sum­mar­i­ly lie in affi­davits and in court in order to gain con­vic­tions and to cov­er their ass­es because they refuse, or, are too stu­pid to fol­low rules.
We can­not have police offi­cers beat­ing up peo­ple who com­mit offens­es against the state and then lying about what occurred.
Police offi­cers do not get to exact vengeance on offend­ers regard­less of their crimes.
In a civ­i­lized soci­ety, we have an entire sys­tem of jus­tice that includes the police, pros­e­cu­tors, defense attor­neys, tiers of tri­al courts, and a whole range of oth­er agen­cies that make the sys­tem of jus­tice work.
It is for those rea­sons that we can­not tol­er­ate police offi­cers tak­ing on the role of judge, jury, and executioner…
In light of that John Miller does not get to gloss over phys­i­cal assault com­mit­ted by NYPD cops and per­jury as well, to add insult to injury.
Even bat­tle­fields have rules.….……(mb)

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.