By the New RoAR News Editorial Board

In a statement responding to the New York State Attorney General’s report on the July 2023 killing of Jarrel Garris by NRPD Detective Steven Conn, the New Rochelle Police Benevolent Association (PBA), the union representing uniformed NRPD officers, claimed that the report confirmed that “Detective Steven Conn’s actions were lawful and justified, that it was Jarrell Garris who caused this encounter to become deadly.”

In fact, while the Attorney General found that New York’s self-defense laws would make it difficult to convict Detective Conn if he were charged with a crime, the report also found that Conn was responsible for needlessly and rapidly escalating the incident from a minor encounter over a petty offense into a lethal confrontation.

Conn, who is white, shot Garris, a Black man with known and evident mental health challenges, on Lincoln Avenue on July 3, 2023, in broad daylight, after Garris allegedly ate some fruit at the nearby New Rochelle Farms market and left without paying.  Body camera videos show that two other officers initially tried to talk with Garris on the street and that he was walking away quietly when Conn ran over, handcuffed one of Garris’s wrists, and punched him in the face.  When Garris pulled away, another officer grabbed his legs, and in the ensuing scuffle, Garris had his hands on the second officer’s gun, which was locked in its holster.  Within seconds, Conn shouted “Gun” and fired a single fatal shot to Garris’s neck.

The Attorney General’s report found that “Mr. Garris was not physically combative until Detective Conn grabbed his arm.”  “Detective Conn’s action appeared to provoke a physically combative response from Mr. Garris,” the report said, “which in turn led to Mr. Garris’s death when he grabbed Officer Bird’s gun.”

The report was critical of the NRPD’s “training and policies for obtaining compliance for a petty nonviolent offense.”  “The decision to use physical force to obtain compliance for a petty offense, particularly where mental health may be a factor in noncompliance,” the report said, “should be made cautiously and should be based on objective criteria.”

“Mr. Garris’s reported offense was petty and nonviolent,” the report continued. “Although he was not complying with the requests of Officers Bird and [Gabriella] Chavarry to stop and talk with them, his noncompliance was not violent or physical. Officer Bird had been recently trained in crisis intervention training. Officer Bird, however, did not have the opportunity to implement her training when Detective Conn grabbed Mr. Garris’s arm in an attempt to gain compliance through physical force.”

The PBA statement turns reality on its head by characterizing Garris as a “violent criminal” who refused lawful orders and resisted a lawful arrest.  The statement says that Garris “violently resisted and fought with the officers” (not mentioning that Conn had punched Garris in the face) and claims that “Conn observed Garris pulling [Bird’s] gun from the holster (while the report found that the gun was firmly locked in the holster throughout the incident).   

The PBA statement notes that the Attorney General’s report “subtly points the finger of blame at the New Rochelle Police Department for Jarrell Garris’s death” and claims that PBA members work “to keep New Rochelle safe for all its citizens”—ignoring the mountain of evidence that Conn initiated a violent physical confrontation with an unarmed and peaceful civilian and ended up killing him.  Is this how the NRPD and the PBA “keep New Rochelle safe for all its citizens?”  Or does the PBA not consider Jarrell Garris a citizen because of his identity or mental disability?

The PBA statement follows the traditional playbook when the police kill an innocent civilian—cherry-pick and distort the evidence, focus on the last few seconds before the fatal shot (not the instigation and escalation of conflict by the police), rely on higher authorities to invoke police-friendly state laws and claim “exoneration,” blame and smear the victim, and hide behind the police’s stated mission to “protect the public.”

The PBA continues to project itself as a force of “good guys” protecting the public from violence and mayhem.  But this story is wearing thin as the incidents pile up of police officers perpetrating violence and mayhem against the communities they are supposed to “protect and serve.”

The PBA statement is a classic example of the police’s traditional belligerent “warrior mentality” that encourages excessive police violence and the expectation that police violence will be met with impunity and gratitude.

In New Rochelle, white officers have killed two Black men under suspicious circumstances in the past four years, and a white police lieutenant has recently been caught on video and suspended for allegedly planting drugs on an innocent Black man and having him arrested. And a newly-elected and more representative City Council is preparing to hire a new City Manager and create a Civilian Complaint Review Board to monitor the police. 

The PBA may huff and puff, dodge and smear, and attempt to claim the high ground, but New Rochelle appears to be ready for a different model of policing, and the days of police impunity and “warrior” policing in New Rochelle are likely numbered.