Commissioner Gazzola says Detective Steven Conn, who killed Jarrel Garris in July 2023, followed all procedures.

For the second time in less than four years, the New Rochelle Police Department (NRPD) has exonerated an officer who killed a Black man after the officer escalated a peaceful encounter or instigated an apparently needless confrontation.

In a statement issued late on the afternoon of Friday, January 24, NRPD Commissioner Robert Gazzola said that the department had completed its investigation of the fatal shooting of Jarrel Garris by Detective Steven Conn on July 3, 2023, and concluded that “none of the officers involved committed violations of department policies or procedures that would have prevented the outcome of the incident.”

Conn shot Garris after Garris had allegedly eaten a few pieces of fruit at the New Rochelle Farms grocery at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and North Avenue and left without paying.  The store owner notified the police, and officers Kari Bird and Gabrielle Chavarry responded.  The officers’ bodycam videos show them speaking calmly and politely to Garris on Lincoln Avenue.  Garris, who appeared to be having mental health difficulties, did not engage with the officers, and began to walk quietly away.  The videos then show the arrival a few moments later of Detective Conn, who ran from his car towards Garris and the officers shouting, “You’re under arrest,” and grabbed Garris by the arm.  In the ensuing scuffle, Garris apparently reached towards Bird’s holstered gun.  Conn then shouted “Gun!” and shot Garris once in the neck.  Garris did not regain consciousness and died in the hospital a week later.

As required by New York State law, the Garris shooting was referred to the office of state Attorney General Letitia James for review.  James’s report, issued on September 18, 2024, found that prosecutors would probably be unable to obtain a conviction against Conn in a court of law.  But the report was sharply critical of Conn’s escalation of the incident, emphasizing that Garris was suspected only of the “petty offense” of taking food from a grocery store without paying, and 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.”

James’s report also criticized 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 said. “Although he was not complying with the requests of Officers Bird and 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.”

Commissioner Gazzola’s brief two-paragraph statement exonerating Conn made no reference to James’s conclusion that Conn had needlessly escalated the encounter and did not elaborate on what “department policies or procedures” Conn was following that led to Garris’s death.

Gazzola’s statement did say, “We are closely reviewing the recommendations contained in the [AG’s] report and will implement those that align with the New York State Department of Criminal Justice Accreditation standards and the laws of the state of New York.  The New Rochelle Police Department is committed to officer training and continuously reviews and updates its training programs to align with best practices and legal developments.”  It did not elaborate on the specific standards or training it had updated or planned to update.

In response to the NRPD’s exoneration of Conn, William Wagstaff, the attorney for Jarrel Garris’s family, issued a statement  noting that “police departments virtually never hold officers accountable for their negligence, misconduct, or criminal acts.” 

“Words matter,” Wagstaff said.  “The indication that none of the officers involved in Jarrel’s killing ‘committed violations of department policies or procedures’ underscores the reason the Garris family and community have been advocating for policy changes, the use of force policies and procedures are flawed and continue to enable unnecessary civilian deaths at the hands of police.”

The NRPD’s exoneration of Detective Conn echoed the exoneration of Officer Alec McKenna, who shot and killed Kamal Flowers after a pursuit by car and on foot that has never been fully explained.

On the evening of June 5, 2020, a week after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Police Officer Alec McKenna and his partner began to follow a car in which 24-year-old Flowers was riding as a passenger.  The police said the car had failed to signal a turn.  The police cruiser followed the car from downtown to Potter Avenue, where the two cars stopped.  Flowers exited the vehicle in which he was riding and began to run from the scene.  McKenna followed Flowers on foot and onto Sharot Street, where McKenna shot Flowers and killed him.  At the time, officers did not wear body cameras, and grainy video from surveillance cameras did not clearly show what happened in the moments before the shooting.  There were no witnesses to the killing.

The next day, the police and city displayed a handgun they claimed Flowers had “brandished” in the confrontation with McKenna.  A Westchester County grand jury declined to indict McKenna, but the District Attorney’s office later reported that Flowers’s DNA had been found on the gun’s trigger.  They did not report any evidence that the gun had been fired.  There was never any explanation of why McKenna pursued Flowers on foot, as he was not the driver of the car and could not have been responsible for any infraction.

An internal review of the case by the New Rochelle Police Department produced only a one-paragraph public statement from then-Commissioner Joseph Schaller on March 3, 2021.  In language almost identical to that used by Commissioner Gazzola in the Garris case, Schaller said, “The entire [Flowers] incident was thoroughly investigated; and, it has been concluded that none of the officers involved in this incident committed any violations of the Department’s policies or procedures.”

Both McKenna and Conn remain on the NRPD payroll.