Officers of the NYPD’s Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit were staked out at a bodega on White Plains Road on 2 February 2012 when two of them radioed colleagues to say they believed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham had a gun in his waistband as he walked toward his home.[1] Officer Richard Haste dashed to the scene, broke into Graham’s grandmother’s apartment in the Wakefield section of the Bronx, and shot Graham dead in the bathroom, in front of his grandmother and his six-year-old brother.[1][2]
No weapon was ever recovered.[2] Police said they found marijuana in a plastic bag in the toilet bowl, suggesting Graham had been trying to get rid of it to avoid a street arrest as Haste confronted him.[1][2]
Indictment, dismissal and a $3.9 million settlement
A grand jury indicted Haste, then 30, on first- and second-degree manslaughter charges in June 2012, the first indictment of any officer among that year’s drug-law deaths.[1] The charges were dismissed in 2013 over a prosecution procedural error, and a second grand jury declined to indict him again.[2] In 2015 Graham’s family settled a wrongful-death suit against the city for $3.9 million, while Haste remained on desk duty.[2]
