NYPD destroyed evidence in 2012 Harlem shooting
Stephen Rex Brown NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Mariela Lombard/for New York Daily News
In a 2012 rally, family and supporters showed up to demand justice in the shooting of Mohamed Bah.
The NYPD destroyed evidence in the controversial police shooting of a Harlem man in 2012 — according to lawyers for Mohamed Bah’s family — a claim dismissed by a city official as “outlandish.”
Police have long said that Mohamed Bah stabbed an officer with a 13-inch knife on Sept. 25, 2012, as they barged into his Harlem apartment after a 911 call from his mother reporting her son was acting strangely.
Three cops shot Bah eight times, killing him.
Lawyers for Bah’s heartbroken mother, Hawa Bah, now believe that police version of events is bogus, and that the 28-year-old mentally ill immigrant from Guinea was “executed.”
“The city should punish the people who murdered my son,” Hawa Bah told the Daily News. “They shouldn’t work in the community with my son’s blood on their hands.”
In this crime scene photo taken where Mohamed bah was shot, the knife's location on the floor is different than it is in other photographs.
A city official called the allegation police executed Bah “outlandish and inflammatory.”
Attorneys Randolph McLaughlin and Debra Cohen say they will file papers in February seeking “the strongest sanctions available” against the city in their $70 million civil suit.
“They’re getting away with murder,” McLaughlin said. The intentional shooting of an individual and then covering it up — that’s murder.”
In this crime scene photo taken where Mohamed bah was shot, the knife's location on the floor is different than it is in other photographs.
Papers will cite an array of missing evidence in the shooting and the NYPD’s unusual handling of the crime scene.
Photos of the crime scene indicate the knife police say Bah was carrying when cops shot him was rotated in the immediate aftermath of the incident for reasons that are a mystery. One video of the crime scene shows no knife at all — though a crime scene officer said under oath it should not have been touched at that time.
Police also moved the knife into an NYPD evidence warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, four days before Hurricane Sandy, papers show. The shirt Detective Edwin Mateo wore at the time Bah allegedly cut him was also moved to the first floor of the flood-damaged building. Both pieces of evidence are contaminated and unavailable, the city says.
Other key evidence — such as the clothes Bah wore at the time he was killed — was “never vouchered” and has been lost, according to court papers. But Cohen and McLaughlin, of the law firm Newman Ferrara, say records and photos show the clothes arrived at the medical examiner’s office, with tags.
According to police, Mohamed Bah lunged at them with a knife, stabbing one officer, before he was shot eight times.
City attorneys say no DNA or fingerprint tests were performed on the knife, though documents indicate tests were requested, the attorneys say.
“The motion is meritless. The City will address the specific allegations if the proposed motion is actually filed,” a Law Department spokesman said.
Filings indicate the city will ask Manhattan Federal Court Judge Kevin Castel to dismiss the suit. City attorney Ashley Garman wrote that the alleged destruction of evidence in the case was “entirely unsubstantiated.”
The hallway outside the apartment in which Mohamed Bah died was covered with blood and littered with bloody rags.
Still, the lack of key evidence adds more mystery to the shooting, which was initially portrayed by police as inevitable.
“The NYPD threw out the rulebook investigating the killing of Mohamed Bah,” said Cohen, adding that the case “shows how broken the system is in regard to how police shootings are investigated.”
The civil suit has revealed Mateo, the cop Bah’s attorneys suspect fired the fatal shot, panicked and shouted, “Shoot him! He’s stabbing me!” after his fellow officer struck him with a stun gun.
“I felt a hot sensation. It was a — like a muscle spasm throughout my whole body,” Mateo said in a deposition, describing the feeling of being hit.
Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah, photographed at her lawyer's office. Mohamed Bah was shot and killed by New York City Police Officers in 2012. Hawa's lawyers Deb Cohen and Randy McLaughlin are filing a motion regarding the destruction of evidence in connection with Mohamed's death. (Joe Marino/New York Daily News)
Mohamed Bah was shot and killed by New York City Police Officers in 2012. His mother Hawa Bah's lawyers Deb Cohen and Randy McLaughlin are filing a motion regarding the destruction of evidence in connection with Mohamed's death. (Joe Marino/New York Daily News)
Mateo could not be reached for comment.
Analysis of the coroner’s report has found that the shot to Bah’s head was at a closer range than the other gun blasts, Cohen writes in court filings. The two other officers who fired say in sworn depositions they shot Bah’s body, not his head.
The case has also uncovered concern among NYPD brass about the protocol for handling emotionally disturbed people — EDPs, in police jargon — who are barricaded inside homes.
In Bah’s case, the emergency services unit, fully clad in SWAT-style gear, poked out his peephole, pried the door open and inserted a pole camera outfitted with LED lights, according to papers. They stormed the apartment after Bah, who was alone, allegedly charged the door.
Joe Marino/New York Daily News
Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah, is filing a $70 million civil suit against the city.
A final summary of the incident from then-Chief of Department Philip Banks to Police Commissioner Bill Bratton on April 29, 2014, found the scenario troubling.
“On several occasions in the past, while attempting to make partial door breaches to insert cameras, the emotionally disturbed person has charged the door. Once it’s occurred, ESU personnel have no choice but to engage. If the door was never breached, they (wouldn't have) found themselves in that situation,” the report read.
An NYPD spokesman declined comment.
With Thomas Tracy
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