Dear Editor,
Three police officers are on trial in Queens for fatally shooting a Black man, Sean Bell, in a hail of 50 bullets fired by five officers in November 2006. The trial has entered its fifth week. The officers have been brought to book for reckless shooting, thanks to agitation from Black community leaders, and this was not the first time officers have been forced on trial for unjustified use of force. Other police trials occurred for shooting an unarmed African man in the Bronx and another unarmed African man in Manhattan. But several years later, there has been no investigation into the police shooting death of an Indo- Guyanese in Queens and no community leader has taken up the issue in spite of repeated requests from me to force the city to launch a proper investigation. Unfortunately, the Indo-Guyanese community has no equivalent of a strong leader like the charismatic and powerful Al Sharpton who can force the city to investigate the use of lethal force against minorities.
Deonarine Matan, a Berbician, was shot inside his home in the Woodhaven section of Queens by three police officers who had come to the house following a complaint from Matan’s family that he was misbehaving. Matan had a few drinks and had an argument with his wife and subsequently his son who intervened on his mother’s side of the dispute. To defuse tension, the son left the home. The police was summoned to quieten down Matan while his wife left the second floor apartment and went downstairs to the neighbour’s apartment on the first floor of the two storeyed building they owned.
I interviewed the family for a report I wrote in a community newspaper about the shooting. The family told me that the police arrived following their emergency call and knocked at the outside door to gain entrance. Matan came downstairs and opened the door with a kitchen knife in his hand. It is not clear why he had a knife in his hand. The family said he was cutting chicken. Matan’s wife said she saw everything while looking through an open door on the first floor apartment. She said Mata did not attack the police officers. A proper investigation would have revealed the truth and determined culpability.
The police opened fire fatally striking Matan with several shots. It is difficult to believe that Matan, upon seeing three armed police officers, would attack them with his kitchen knife. And even if he did attack them, were several shots justified to disarm him? Why wasn’t pepper spray used to overcome Matan’s aggressiveness if indeed he attacked the officers as they claimed. How could he attack three officers simultaneously when the front door could accommodate one officer at a time? And upon seeing Matan with a knife and feeling threatened why didn’t the officers just close the door and call for back up or seek the advice of superiors? I posed these questions to the police captain on the phone and he refused to answer them. Instead, he referred me to the Police Commissioner‘s office and its PR office. The matter died there. The Matan family received no justice.
Up till now, there has not been a satisfactory explanation for the shooting. The three officers should have been grilled to explain their use of lethal force. No inquest was held into the killing. No community leader complained or sought to comfort the family. And the community leaders just let the shooting slip by.
Some time ago I met Matan’s wife on the subway platform while waiting for a train for the ride home. She told me the family received no compensation from the police. They had to stand all the expenses of the funeral. And they also did not collect on Matan’s insurance policy because the insurance company said it was Matan’s fault.
This was a family that needed help to address what was clearly an injustice. The Indo-Guyanese community leaders in Queens let the family down.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Bisram
