A month after the fatal shooting of Jarrell Garris by New Rochelle Police Detective Steven Conn, neither the City  nor the New York State Attorney General’s office has given any indication on who, if anyone, will be held accountable for the controversial killing, or when such a determination might be made.

Garris was shot outside St. Catherine’s Church on Lincoln Avenue on the afternoon of July 3 after allegedly eating a banana and some grapes at the nearby New Rochelle Farms market and leaving the store without paying.

Videos from police body cameras show Garris walking away silently when two female police officers approached him and attempted to engage him in conversation about the alleged theft.  The video then shows Detective Conn exiting his car a distance away, calling for Garris’s arrest, running towards him, handcuffing him, calling for a Taser, then shouting “he’s got a gun” and shooting him.  Garris was unarmed but allegedly reached for one of the officers’ guns as they scuffled on the ground.  Viewers of the video have differed on whether it actually shows Garris reaching for a gun.

After Garris died on July 10, New Rochelle referred the case to State Attorney General Letitia James’s office for investigation, as required by law.  James’s office has not commented on the case since releasing a few additional seconds of video footage on July 25 and did not return a call from New RoAR News requesting information on the timeline for the investigation.

In an interview on July 27, Captain Jay Collins Coyne, the New Rochelle Police Department’s Designated Public Information Officer, told New RoAR News that state law prohibited the department from commenting on its internal disciplinary investigation until the state Attorney General completes her investigation, but he was unable to cite a state law or regulation imposing that restriction. 

Officers in other jurisdictions have been disciplined before the completion of criminal investigations.  In Minneapolis, Police Officer Derrick Chauvin was fired the day after he killed George Floyd.  In a recent incident in Ohio, a police officer was fired the day after he allowed a police dog to attack a Black driver who was complying with instructions after a traffic stop. 

New RoAR News has been unable to locate any state law or regulation prohibiting public comment on police disciplinary action during a pending criminal investigation.  A call from New RoAR News to the city’s Department of Law seeking clarification of this restriction was not returned. 

Meanwhile, New Rochelle’s Community-Police Partnership Board (CPPB) has been reviewing the Garris killing as required by the city’s 2021 Police Reform Plan but has not commented publicly on the incident.  CPPB Community Co-Chair Pastor David Holder told New RoAR News that the panel, made up of community and police representatives, is reviewing “every one of the community’s concerns” about the killing but could not say if or when the CPPB would issue a public report on the incident. 

Pastor Holder also confirmed that the consultant group CGR had submitted its report to the CPPB with recommendations for the formation of a Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), as mandated by the Police Reform Plan.  CGR has been studying options for a local CCRB since late 2022.   Pastor Holder said that the CPPB is reviewing CGR’s report and may request some clarifications or revisions.  When the report is finalized, it will be sent to the City Council for further action.   Pastor Holder said he anticipated that the report would be made public by the Council “sometime this fall.”