By Michael Weissenstein, The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) -- The police officer who shot an unarmed teenager on the roof of a Brooklyn housing project should face criminal charges, the victim’s parents said Monday.
“I want this officer to go to jail,” Phyllis Clayburne, mother of Timothy Stansbury Jr., said at a news conference in Brooklyn. “When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, no matter who you are, no matter what you are.”
The victim’s father, Timothy Stansbury Sr., added, “We want to see some justice.”
Stansbury, 19, was shot once in the chest as he pushed open a red metal door to the roof of the Louis Armstrong Houses in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. Officer Richard Neri, who had his gun drawn, was pulling the door from the other side as part of a routine stairwell and rooftop “vertical patrol” that he was conducting with his partner.
Neri, 35, reportedly has indicated that he was startled by the sudden encounter, and fired by accident.
Prosecutors in Brooklyn were expected to convene a grand jury later this week to consider charges ranging from manslaughter to murder.
In Albany, Mayor Michael Bloomberg again apologized for the tragedy, but also defended the Police Department’s crime-fighting record.
“We have to do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” the mayor said at a budget hearing. “You have my commitment.”
Bloomberg added that the NYPD “has done a spectacular job of bringing crime down. ... And we should not forget that.”
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly was assembling a special panel of borough-level commanders to review tactical and training issues arising from the fatality. Kelly already has labeled the shooting “unjustified,” and stripped the officer of his badge and gun pending the outcome of an investigation.
Police say rooftops and stairwells at problem housing projects are frequented by drug dealers and other criminals, as well as menacing pit bull dogs. Officers on patrol there have the option to keep their pistols drawn at their sides if they sense a threat.
Stansbury was using the rooftop to go from one building to another -- a practice some residents say is common.
City Councilman Charles Barron, who joined Stansbury’s parents at the news conference, asked, “If you know that’s a normal route that young people take, why would you tell officers to have their guns out?”
Stansbury, who was black, was a senior at Thomas Jefferson High School who worked part-time at a McDonald’s, relatives said.
Neri, who is white, is an 11-year veteran who had never fired his gun in the line of duty, police said. His lawyer has called him a “model professional officer.”
New York is not alone in using vertical patrols to combat housing project crime. Four years ago, Chicago began an aggressive campaign of floor-to-floor patrols involving 400 officers and resulting in hundreds of arrests, most drug-related.
Associated Press Writers Michael Gormley in Albany and Tom Hays in New York City contributed to this report.