Compiling a database of media accounts, ColorLines determined that Dorismond and Stansbury were two of 88 shooting fatalities of civilians by the NYPD from January 2000 to April 2007. In order to corroborate our project’s findings, ColorLines filed a Freedom of Information Request to the NYPD in May requesting such data, but by press time had still not received the information.

New York City consistently has the highest number of shooting deaths by police in the country, an average of 12 every year. The city also has substantially disproportionate killing of Black people, who make up 26 percent of the population but represented 66 percent of those killed by police.

Perhaps the most striking data of the period concerns the fates of active officers, on or off duty, found to have fatally shot civilians. Including all shootings–even cases where victims were unarmed–only one officer was convicted of wrongdoing. In 2005, Judge Robert H. Straus found Officer Bryan Conroy guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the 2003 death of Ousmane Zongo, a West African immigrant and art restorer who rented a storage room at a Chelsea warehouse where the NYPD was conducting a raid targeting a counterfeit CD and DVD operation. A jury trial had previously deadlocked when considering the case.

According to the judge, Zongo–who had no criminal record or involvement in the counterfeit ring–emerged from his room and encountered Conroy, who was guarding a stack of CDs. In response, Conroy, who was dressed as a mail carrier, assumed a combat stance by raising his weapon and pointing it at Zongo. According to Conroy’s testimony, Zongo lunged at him and then fled. Conroy, who acknowledged that he knew Zongo was unarmed, chased him for 50 yards and claimed he was forced to shoot Zongo four times during a struggle for his gun. Ballistics evidence indicated that the bullets hit Zongo’s body and traveled downward–contradicting Conroy’s testimony that he fired from the hip–and that at least one bullet hit Zongo in the back.

Still, although Judge Straus stated that the NYPD conducted the raid in a haphazard manner, and he determined that Conroy’s actions were criminal, his sentence for Conroy was lenient–five years probation and 500 hours of community service, versus the four years in prison he could have received. (After the judge’s ruling, Conroy was fired by the NYPD.) In 2006, as a result of a civil case, the city paid $3 million to Zongo’s relatives to settle a wrongful death lawsuit.

In the opinion of Delores Jones-Brown, interim director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College, jurors are hesitant to convict officers because of deeply held assumptions about law enforcement. "People think, ‘We have to believe the cops, ‘cause they’re here to protect us.’ Most laypeople aren’t going to be critical of their actions."

Another contentious issue regarding convictions of officers involves the role of the district atttorney. In New York City, there is a general feeling among police critics that because of close ties to the NYPD, the DA doesn’t present strong arguments to grand juries, who ultimately decide whether a case goes to trial or not. Because grand jury testimony is sealed, and lawyers for the victims aren’t given access to the proceedings, there is little direct evidence to back this up–but the secrecy only fuels speculation of collusion.

"If you can have the trial jury public, why not have the grand jury public?" asks Barron. In the wake of the Sean Bell shooting–where cops fired 50 rounds at three unarmed men, killing Bell on the night before his wedding–attorney Norman Siegel and others asked for an independent prosecutor, afraid that the Queens’ DA was too close to the police. The DA’s office, in turn, reiterated its independence, and eventually a grand jury indicted three of the officers involved in the shooting–for manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment, though not for depraved indifference, as some critics had hoped, which could have drawn a stiffer sentence. No date for the trial has been set.