Posted on 03/01/2005 10:09:42 AM PST by WL-law
Rookie killed boy driving away after being told to stop.
DELRAY BEACH — The young police officer who shot and killed a teenager outside a school dance Saturday night had been on solo duty less than a month, police said Monday.
Darren Cogoni, 23, who completed field training Feb. 3, fired into a car driven by 16-year-old Jerrod Miller about 9 p.m. on the campus of the Delray Full Service Center. The Olympic Heights High School sophomore died a short time later.
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Police have said Miller was driving the white Cadillac erratically in a courtyard peppered with kids before the shooting, though they have provided few details. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office are investigating.
Officials at the Delray Full Service Center, an alternative school for students with behavior problems, offered grief counseling to students Monday, while city officials fielded angry, race-related questions about the shooting. Cogoni is white; Miller was black.
State Attorney Barry Krischer's office released a statement on Krischer's behalf that said, in part, "In an effort to quell the misinformation and rumors, and to mitigate the community's concern with regard to this shooting, I want to reassure the family of Jerrod Miller, as well as the residents of Delray Beach, that this matter is under independent review, and the results will be made public."
More witnesses will be interviewed today, and investigators are awaiting results of the medical examiner's report, the statement said.
Nearly 200 people, including Miller's family and Bishop Thomas Masters, filed into the Daughter of Zion Seventh Day Adventist Church Monday night to pray and talk about Miller's death. Masters, a community activist who is running for mayor of Riviera Beach, said he attended the meeting to address "a string of questionable shootings and killings in Delray."
Masters said he encourages the community to "allow the process to take its course."
Saturday's incident was the third fatal shooting by a Delray Beach police officer since July 2002. In December, a man died after he was shocked twice by a police officer's Taser during his arrest, though the county medical examiner has not released the cause of his death.
Victim's friend outlines scenario
Alonzo Smith, a 17-year-old friend of Miller's, said he was about to get into the Cadillac Saturday night when officers approached Miller and asked for his license. Miller, who didn't have a licence, didn't answer police.
When the officer stepped back, looking as if he were grabbing for his gun, Miller hit the gas, Smith said. The car curved through a grassy courtyard toward a group of girls sitting on steps leading to the gymnasium.
The students jumped out of the car's path, officials said, and the Cadillac sped away from officers chasing it. One witness said she heard two shots. Smith said he heard three.
Around 1 a.m., doctors at Delray Medical Center told Miller's large family that the teen, who had no criminal record, was dead.
A school police officer walked Miller's family through the scene on Monday morning: yellow, serpentine lines marking Miller's alleged course through a grassy area outside the gym, painted circles showing where the officer's shell casings fell and a 30-foot scrape in the side of a building left by the Cadillac lumbering through a narrow breezeway.
They saw where the car came to rest, its back window partially shattered, probably by the officer's bullet.
"We prayed together," said school police officer Vinny Mintus, a Delray Beach police officer for 20 years before retiring in 2000. "They're frustrated. They're hurting. There are a lot of unanswered questions."
Miller's family hired a lawyer, though she was unavailable for comment Monday night.
"The family still has no information about Jerrod or about his body," said his aunt, Joelle Cornelius.
She described her nephew as a "good Christian boy" from a strong family. He loved basketball and music and didn't hang out on the streets, she said.
"If he wasn't with one grandmother, he was with the other," she said.
Thomas Siccone spotted Miller's picture in the newspaper Monday morning and hoped it wasn't the same youth he tutored in reading three years ago.
"I remembered Jerrod vividly," he said. "He was a sweet kid. He was very diligent about improving his reading. He was a soft-spoken, unassuming young man."
The police department's use-of-force policy states that officers shouldn't fire at a moving vehicle "unless they reasonably believe that this action is necessary to defend themselves or another from death or serious injury."
Cogoni, who was put on paid administrative leave, was hired by the police department in March 2004. He attended the police academy, then went through field training, which lasts about four months. During field training, an officer is paired with a different training officer in each of four phases.
Cogoni wept after the shooting, a witness said.
The dance for 12- to 16-year-olds was the school's first and was scheduled from 8 p.m. to midnight, said school district spokesman Nat Harrington.
School administrators decided a dance would provide an after-school activity and raise money for the school. At the time of the shooting, about 45 young people were at the school, Harrington said. About 20 were inside, he said.
Twelve school employees served as chaperons and a Delray Beach police officer was the DJ.
Vice Mayor Alberta McCarthy said she has received many calls about the shootings from residents. She said she is working to ensure that information is distributed through neighborhood association presidents.
She said some residents wondered whether the shooting was racially motivated, and that she in turn "asked them what they are basing it on."
Mayor Jeff Perlman said city officials are in regular contact with the local NAACP and are trying to set up a community forum this weekend. He said Police Chief Larry Schroeder has been meeting with church, business and neighborhood leaders.
"They're asking a lot of questions about the process and what happened," Perlman said. "The 'what happened' part we don't really know yet definitively, but we're trying to tell people what the process is, who does the investigation."
Delray Beach officials recently hired consultant Sam Mathis to advise the city on how to improve race relations.
Perlman said the shooting and the resulting questions from the black community illustrate why the initiative is needed, although Mathis' recommendations have not been implemented. A committee will be formed to provide a forum for residents to talk about race.
"This is one of the reasons you need to have good communication and good relations," Perlman said.
Students to honor memory
Schools Superintendent Art Johnson said the district will help students cope with their bereavement and leave the investigation of the incident to law enforcement officials.
"When you do something that is perceived as being dangerous, or is dangerous, you put police in a very awkward position," he said.
Students at Olympic Heights, who called Miller "Smiley," planned to make posters and T-shirts with Miller's picture to honor his memory.
"We still can't get over it," said Keisha Boone, 15. "It's not even a reality to us."
Boone, who said she dated Miller for several weeks last year, said he was a nice boy who attended church every Sunday. She said Miller didn't like to fight and "didn't like his friends fighting either."
She said Miller was a good student whose strongest subject was math.
Bianca Baker, 15, said he got along with everyone.
"He always tried to work things out."
Prepare to get flamed for being "anti-cop".
And if the rookie cop had just let this nice teenager go and he had run over someone and killed them, they would be after the cop for letting him go. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.
WHERE'S THE FLIPPIN' LINK???
Want to take bets that this kid comes from a broken home and has no father in his life? It is a tragedy what has happened, but things could have been done a long time ago that would have prevented this. But as long as his parents aren't smokers, they should be praised.
Yeah, by running away from a cop (with a gun) over a relatively minor issue. He really tried to work things out. Now he's dead and the only thing he will have to work out is his relationship with the Creator.
There is still no answer as to whose car it was and how an unlicensed 16 YO came to be driving it.
I don't think so, based on what seems to really have happened.
The kid was fleeing the cop, no question there.
AS PART OF FLEEING, he drove, prehaps dangerously, near some kids sitting on steps. No word on how close he came to the steps. I presume he did NOT go up on the steps.
So the intent was, it appears, to flee, not to run-over-other-kids, and I expect that the cop knew that.
The part of the story (from yesterday) that he drove down a sidewalk, appears to be the path the driverless car took AFTER the driver had been shot. The car continued forward until it eventually struck a wall.
So -- I don't believe that the car was being used as a weapon. I don't think any reaonable person could conclude that, except one that reflexively defends cops in all situations.
So kid-with-discipline-problem meets cop-with-judgment-problem.
Victor = cop, kid R.I.P.
Exactly the sentiments I went round and round with cops-do-no-wrong types yesterday.
Thank you for putting it into concise words for me.
He drove at kids. They had to flee.
Good shooting.
Messer said both Delray Beach police and Palm Beach County School District police were on the school campus at the time of the shooting, providing security for the dance.
Messer said at least one Delray Beach officer fired at the car, but he did not know the number of shots fired. Following standard procedure, the officer has been placed on administrative leave, he said.
A 16-year-old Atlantic High School student who was at the school's gate said he saw the teenager driving up and down the street.
Then, the student said, the driver "came in the gate and was stopped by the police. The police said, 'Let me see your license.'."
At that point, the student said, the driver pulled off, swerving, and police fired at the car. He said the car was pulling away when police fired. He said he heard two shots.
The driver, who was alone in the car, was turning down a courtyard -- chasing people out of the path of the car -- when he was hit, and the car crashed, the student said.
The boy was shot near the school gym, where the dance was being held.
What's not clear -- were the kids mentioned above as "jumping out of the way" the same kids that were sitting on the steps (when he was clearly running AWAY from the cops, not trying to run over other kids). If yes, then there's a false impression created that the driver was targeting kids with the car.
As for driving down a pedestrian alley -- it appears that he had already been shot, and the car was going forward on its own momentum.
Even your article admits the driver threatened lives with his car.
Good shooting.
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