Posted on 03/02/2007 4:43:50 AM PST by grjr21
On a cold February night three years ago, Philadelphia Police Officers Anthony Desher and Joseph Jonas responded to this radio call:
"Cars, stand by, 3221 North Front, person with a gun in front of V.I.P. barbershop..."
Inside was 27-year-old shop owner Daniel Estevez, who had called 911 after an argument spiraled out of control.
Instead of getting help, the barber was shot at by police. Then he was criminally charged with shooting at them, which a judge later determined did not happen. While fighting his criminal case, he lost his business.
At a time when more people in Philadelphia are being fatally shot by police than in any other big city, what happened that February night raises questions about how well the department polices itself in civilian shootings.
In this case, evidence contradicted what the officers said happened:
The officers said Estevez fired four shots directly at them. However, crime-scene investigators found two of his bullets in the floor. Estevez and witnesses said they were from warning shots Estevez fired when an armed man confronted him before police arrived.
A judge concluded that Estevez fired his other two bullets at the armed man, Miguel Torres - not at the two officers.
Despite interviews with nine witnesses whose accounts helped support Estevez's version of events, the investigating detective gave prosecutors an arrest report that made no reference to those accounts. The report relied only on the officers' claim that Estevez had shot at them. Estevez was then charged with attempted murder and related offenses.
The police radio dispatcher failed to tell responding officers that Estevez had a gun. Estevez told the 911 dispatcher that he was being threatened by an armed group, that he was armed and would defend himself, but that he wanted police help to prevent a tragedy.
Estevez was found not guilty on all counts by Common Pleas Court Judge Rayford A. Means, who said in his verdict he found it "ludicrous" that Estevez would call police for help and then try to kill them when they arrived.
An Internal Affairs report on the shooting, despite mentioning the two bullets found in the floor, did not examine the conflict between that evidence and what Desher and Jonas said took place. The report cleared both officers of wrongdoing.
The Estevez case echoes the findings of a court-mandated monitor who reviewed six years of officer-involved shootings in a 2005 report.
Ellen Green-Ceisler, then head of the Integrity and Accountability Office, found that the "majority" of internal shooting investigations were "satisfactory."
However, she wrote: "In some cases, investigators did not ask necessary and probing questions regarding issues relevant to the shooting, did not always address inconsistencies and ambiguities..."
She added, "In some investigations, physical evidence and civilian eyewitness statements that contradicted officers' version of events appeared to be disregarded. These practices raise questions regarding the impartiality of some investigations."
The Green-Ceisler report covered cases from 1998 to 2003. Fatal shootings by Philadelphia police have increased substantially since then - 22 last year, including two outside the city - but there has been no further publicized review of additional cases. Between 1998 and 2002 the city had an average of five fatal police shootings per year; since then the city has averaged 13.
Federal lawsuit
Estevez, who lives with his girlfriend and two young children, has filed a federal lawsuit against the city that is set for trial March 13, claiming his civil rights were violated.
The barber contends the two police officers "fabricated a story" that he shot at them. Detective Thomas J. Clancy, the suit also says, submitted "false and misleading" information to prosecutors to get Estevez criminally charged.
The Police Department declined to comment on the Estevez case, citing the litigation.
The three officers did not respond to written requests from The Inquirer seeking interviews.
Assistant District Attorney Carol Sweeney, who prosecuted Estevez, said she could not comment on the criminal case without reviewing her records, which she could not immediately do.
Not in dispute is the 911 call Estevez made at 7:44 p.m. on Feb. 19, 2004.
Earlier, a group of people had arrived at the Kensington shop to confront another barber who had allegedly gotten a young woman pregnant. Estevez said he insisted the group take the argument outside, where he flagged down a police officer who ordered the crowd to disperse.
Soon afterward, the young woman's brother, Miguel Torres, returned with others and Estevez called 911.
According to a transcript of the call, Estevez, in Spanish, told the Spanish-speaking call taker, "I'm armed, and there's armed people outside that want to shoot at the barbershop because one of my employees had a personal problem with them."
Police radio: "Okay."
Estevez: "But they are armed. I am armed as well but legally. I don't want anything bad to happen... . If they do come in, I'm going to defend myself, really."
Police radio: "Okay."
Estevez: "That's what I don't want."
Police radio: "Okay. Stay inside..."
Officers' account
During an Internal Affairs investigation and under oath at Estevez's criminal trial in May, Desher and Jonas gave this version of what happened next:
The uniformed Highway Patrol officers, entering the doorway of the well-lighted barbershop, saw an armed man (Estevez). They identified themselves and told the man "two or three times" to drop the gun.
"He's looking right at us," Jonas testified. "He then turns as if he acknowledged us, put the weapon to the side, and looked like he was going to place the weapon" on a barber chair, "... and a second later he just turns around and fires two shots right at us."
The officers said they retreated outside, where Desher fired twice through the front window. Estevez, they said, then fired twice more at them. Jonas fired two shots back.
No police were injured.
Estevez ended up struck and grazed five times by bullets.
The judge concluded Torres had shot him in the chest.
Estevez's lawsuit alleges that some of his wounds were caused by police, but ballistic tests can't be done: Police did not recover bullet fragments removed from Estevez during surgery.
Torres, 23, who has not been charged in the shooting, did not respond to a written request from The Inquirer for comment, but his mother did.
Gloria Rivera, 42, said she went with her son, her daughter, her brother, and one other man to the V.I.P. Barber Shop that night to confront another barber. She said that no one in her group was armed and that Estevez shot at the group as it fled.
As Estevez fought the criminal case, he lost his barbershop because he couldn't work and pay the rent. He was bedridden for two months, he said.
Estevez, now 30, works at his brother's barbershop on East Tioga Street in Kensington. He said he hoped to again have his own shop some day.
Estevez, a native of the Dominican Republic and a licensed barber, came to Philadelphia from New York "for a better opportunity," he said through a translator. "I heard a lot about Philadelphia. I heard it was good."
He opened V.I.P. in 2003, he said. At his home in North Philadelphia, Estevez showed off a trophy from the "Elegant Styles for Hope" barber contest held in Philadelphia on Nov. 23, 2003.
"There were 40 barbers," he said. "And I won first prize."
A few months later, his life fell apart.
Choked with emotion, he recalled how he felt as he pondered the prospect of being found guilty.
"I would say, 'God, why is this happening? You know how I am, God, I'm not a bad person.' I asked God, 'Please don't abandon me.' "
Estevez said that after his four-day trial, he spent about a year working in maintenance at a school before he started cutting hair again at his brother's shop.
He no longer owns a gun, he said.
"I find it a very bad idea at this moment," he said.
He wants the city to pay for what happened to him.
In a motion to dismiss the suit, filed in January, city lawyers concurred with much of the barber's version of events, including that he fired the first two shots into the floor.
However, the lawyers said that Desher and Jonas "arrived on the scene of a gunfight" and that Estevez was firing in their direction, justifying shooting at Estevez and pursuing a criminal case against him.
But Desher and Jonas did not testify that they arrived at the scene of a gunfight.
And Joseph J. Stine, a former Philadelphia police inspector retained by Estevez's lawyers, Anthony J. Petrone and Dennis J. Cogan, said in a report the evidence of the two bullets shot into the floor "makes it impossible for the shooting to have occurred in the way Officers Jonas and Desher state that it happened."
Stine also noted that the police radio system "placed Mr. Estevez in deadly peril." It never relayed to the officers that the 911 caller was armed.
Judge Means called the dispatch response "a very, very deficient radio call."
Arthur R. Shuman, former second-in-command at the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office who was retained by Estevez's lawyers, said in a court filing that Detective Clancy, who investigated the criminal case against Estevez, had "intentionally falsified" the arrest report submitted to prosecutors.
"At the point Clancy carried out his fraud, he probably did not have a full appreciation for the way in which the physical evidence and ballistics evidence would show his ruse to be just what it was," Shuman wrote.
In a deposition, Clancy acknowledged he had received witness information about shots being fired before the police arrived but did not include that information in the arrest report he gave prosecutors.
Clancy also said he based his decision to seek criminal charges against Estevez just on what the two officers said had happened.
Petrone: "So based on that alone, you decided without any further investigation to seek approval of criminal charges?"
Clancy: "Yes. On their information that he was firing his weapon at police."
Ping
Yeah... sure...
At a time when more people in Philadelphia are being fatally shot by police than in any other big city, what happened that February night raises questions about how well the department polices itself in civilian shootings.
Leave it to the Inky to zero in on this as a major problem. We have a criminal in the Mayor's office, at least three in city council, our State Senate Rep., a police force forbidden to enforce laws against mexicans, and a bunch of liberal judges who let violent criminals back out on the streets lest their feelings be hurt.
Owl_Eagle
If what I just wrote made you sad or angry,
it was probably just a joke.
Dial 911 and get shot, today's police at work.
Clearly you were misinformed...
I would never call 911 untill my house was secure or I was laying in a pool of blood.
Excellent link - thanks for posting it.
I hope some of the "defend the police for anything" crowd around here, reads that.
It is events like that, that make us extremely suspicious of all police.
I think that the guy should sue Phildelphia for defamation of character and back damages.
"At a time when more people in Philadelphia are being fatally shot by police than in any other big city,"
I thought Philly had very strict gun laws. I think they wanted to adopt DC's gun laws.
BTTT
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