'We called for help, and they killed my son,' North Carolina man says

Seventy seconds: That's how long a North Carolina family says it took for things to go horribly wrong as they sought police help dealing with their mentally ill son.
Keith Vidal, 18, died Sunday. According to CNN affiliate WECT, he was just shot 1 minute and 10 seconds after a third law enforcement officer showed up at his Brunswick County home.
The three officers all were from different jurisdictions, and family members say that the third officer -- who came from a nearby city -- turned what had been an improving situation into an unnecessarily aggressive encounter that ended in their son's death.
"There was no reason to shoot this kid," the teen's stepfather, Mark Wilsey, told WECT on Monday. "They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help, and they killed my son."
Although the state Bureau of Investigation is looking into the shooting, the chief prosecutor for the state's 13th Judicial District, which includes Brunswick County, says it's way too early to characterize what happened.
"I think that we can certainly understand why this family is upset right now," the Wilmington Star-News newspaper quoted District Attorney Jon David as saying. "They just lost a child, and certainly my thoughts and prayers are with them. But what they want from this office today is justice, and I intend to give them exactly that."

CNN first learned of the shooting through an iReport sent by a family friend. The iReport received more than 50,000 views in 24 hours.
The incident happened Sunday afternoon when the mother and stepfather of the Boiling Spring Lakes man called police. According to stepbrother Mark Ryan Wilsey, Vidal had schizophrenia and "was having an episode," and his parents wanted police to subdue him so he could get help.
"He's not doing very good. You've got to get him someplace," a man who identified himself as Vidal's stepfather said on a 911 call, a copy of which was obtained by WECT. "He wants to fight his mother. ... She's scared to death of him right now."
The caller said that Vidal "won't take his medication" and that his family has had "to put him in before, (and) he's getting real bad again."
"He's just, he's not right," he said.
Two officers arrived and began talking with Vidal, according to CNN affiliate WWAY. The situation was relatively calm until a third officer -- a detective from the nearby city of Southport -- arrived, the family said.
"Everything was going good," Mark Wilsey said, according to WWAY. "Then this fat cop from Southport walks in the room, walks around the corner, says, 'We don't have time for this. Tase that kid now. Let's get him out of here.' "
The stepfather said Vidal tried to run but was struck with two Taser charges and fell backward. He said the first two officers to respond got on top of Vidal.
WECT attributed a slightly different accounting of events to Mark Wilsey. In that retelling, the stepfather said officers had pinned Vidal to the ground after he had been tased and one of the officers said, "We don't have time for this" and shot his stepson.
Seventy seconds after the third officer arrived, WECT reported, citing police records, police radioed that they had had to shoot the teenager in self-defense.
Mark Ryan Wilsey, who was not at the house but rushed there in an "absolute panic" and claimed that police restrained him, said his family is outraged by what happened and determined to get justice.
"We want the truth to be out there," he said. "We don't want the good ole cops system to play out something that ain't the truth."
Authorities have not released the exact sequence of events, including how and by whom Vidal was shot.
A Southport officer has been placed on paid administrative leave in connection with the shooting, Police Chief Jerry Dove said Tuesday. Authorities have declined to say whether he was the officer who shot Vidal.
The Brunswick County sheriff's deputy sent to the scene has been "cleared," office spokeswoman Emily Flax said. A review conducted by its Office of Professional Standards found that the deputy did not violate policy, Flax added.
Boiling Spring Lakes Police Chief Brad Shirley said the same thing Tuesday of that department's officer, who was the first to arrive on the scene. The department said in a statement that, after an "internal review," it concluded that the Boiling Spring Lakes police officer who responded did not violate department policy or state law.
Neither the district attorney nor the state Bureau of Investigation returned messages seeking comment Tuesday.
CNN iReporter Anthony Owens, whom Mark Ryan Wilsey described as a good friend of the family's, described Vidal as a slight young man who was never violent despite his mental illness.
"All he wanted to do was play drums," Owens said. "He was so awesome."
The late teen's stepbrother said he did everything with Vidal -- hunting, fishing, sports and more -- describing him as a "good kid."
"He was my little buddy," Mark Ryan Wilsey said.
Owens said the incident highlights the need for more understanding and awareness of mental illness.
"I was devastated by the news and am desperate to find some kind of good that could come from this horrible situation," Owens said.
Mark Ryan Wilsey offered a similar sentiment, saying his family hopes to start a foundation to help the mentally ill like Vidal.
"We're uniting together, and we're going to make this go public," he said of the family's collaboration with Owens. "Because the way my brother got treated ain't right."

More Diversity in New York City’s Police Dept., but Blacks Lag

It is among Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s prouder legacies: A majority of the police officers in New York City are now members of minorities, and have been since roughly 2006. 

But as the Police Department has attracted an increasingly kaleidoscopic range of nationalities to its ranks in recent years — officers hail from Albania to Yemen — department statistics reveal a decline in new recruits among black New Yorkers.

The decline comes despite aggressive recruitment efforts in places like central Harlem and the Bronx, where the department regularly assigns friendly recruitment officers to visit.

In 2003, 18 percent of the Police Academy’s 2,108 graduates were black. Of the 1,247 recruits who started the academy this summer and will graduate on Friday, blacks make up about 10 percent, according to the department. By contrast, the percentage of Hispanic recruits has remained around 25 percent from 2003 till now, and the percentage of white non-Hispanic recruits has actually risen in recent years, to 57 percent from 52 percent in 2003.

There are many possible explanations for the decline, including demographic shifts in the city’s black population, a rise in the number of new immigrant applicants and possibly the highly publicized reduction of officers’ starting salary midway through the decade. (It was since raised to a base pay of about $42,000.)

The Police Department’s aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics may have played a role as well. As the percentage of black recruits to the Police Academy zigzagged downward over the last decade, the number of recorded street stops, mostly in minority neighborhoods, rose higher, sowing distrust of the police.

“I think most people are past saying ‘Oh, don’t be a cop,’ ” said Orayne Williams, 22, a senior at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who is from Flatbush, Brooklyn. “But it still does exist. People from the community have that mind-set.”

Standing nearby, his friend Parris Bailey cut in. “I like the stop-and-frisk idea; they need to be able to do their job,” said Ms. Bailey, 21, who lives with her parents in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and counts “Law and Order” among her favorite shows. But she said she never considered being a police officer.

“Defense attorney,” she said.

Mr. Williams said he was preparing for the Law School Admissions Test, not the police exam.

Police departments often struggle to diversify their ranks, and the New York Police Department has made strides over the last decade. It is roughly 30 percent Hispanic at the patrol level; it has more than doubled the number of Asian police officers since 2003; and it is slowly moving toward being majority minority across all ranks. (About 52 percent of the 34,000-member force was white at the start of 2013; 16 percent was black.)

By contrast, at the Port Authority Police Department, blacks make up a small part of each academy class. Out of 217 graduates in 2012, 13 were black. That is up from just four in 2008, the last year of new recruits.

Recruiters for the New York Police Department, who are officers themselves, pitch the job mostly for its benefits: compensation of over $90,000 after five and one-half years, the option to retire after 22 years with half pay and health care. The recruiting slogan is: “Be Proud.”

At the start of the Bloomberg administration, attitudes toward the police in minority neighborhoods softened in anticipation of a shift from the law-and-order approach of Rudolph W. Giuliani and a string of police shootings of black men. Under Mr. Kelly, the department pushed to increase diversity while requiring two years of college credit or military service to enter the academy.

Yet critics charge that police behavior in minority neighborhoods over the last decade has hindered efforts to attract black officers, alienating many young men and sowing broader resentment. “We had this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde recruitment strategy that played out in the community,” said State Senator Eric Adams, a retired police officer.

“I had a conversation with Commissioner Kelly around this,” he added. “He had to acknowledge that the Police Department is not doing well at recruiting black men.”

John J. McCarthy, the department’s chief spokesman, pointed to statistics showing the overall diversity of the department and that, since 2010, the percentage of blacks taking the Police Department exam had remained relatively constant, fluctuating between 17 and 20 percent of all test takers. Those who pass may not become officers for a variety of reasons, including residency requirements and background checks. (There is also now a two-and-a-half-year wait between the time an applicant takes the test and enters the academy, possibly dissuading some.)

“Although the N.Y.P.D. is smaller than it was over a decade ago, the agency is more diverse than ever before,” Mr. McCarthy said. “In fact, the N.Y.P.D. is the most diverse police department anywhere in the world.”

The incoming police commissioner, William J. Bratton, had to deal with similar apparent distrust in Los Angeles. Under his leadership, the department convened focus groups with African-American residents to learn of their concerns before trying aggressive recruiting. Some said they actively discouraged their children from joining the force.

“One group that was particularly adamant against young black men joining were mothers who saw their sons, and in some cases their grandsons, jacked around over the years,” said John W. Mack, a former head of the Los Angeles Urban League and then president of that city’s police commission during Mr. Bratton’s tenure there. “And why would you want your sons to join a police force who was doing that?”

The situation can be frustrating for black officers in New York.

“This is a great job,” said Detective Yuseff Hamm, the president of the Guardians, a black fraternal organization that dates from 1942. “This is a great career. This is an absolute benefit to the citizens of New York. But a lot of people don’t look at it that way in the community.”

Detective Hamm said the biggest challenge was attracting new black recruits who do not already have family members in law enforcement. Stop-and-frisk, he said, is just one of many concerns. “It comes up in them saying, ‘Is that what I would have to do?’ ” he said. More often, he said, the department’s educational requirements pose problems. “It’s necessary, but a hindrance at the same time,” he said.

Census data shows that the number of blacks who could be eligible to be hired by the Police Department — 21- to 35-year-olds with at least two years of college living in the city or surrounding eligible counties — has increased since 2000. At the same time, said Susan Weber-Stoeger, a demographer at Queens College, the number represents a smaller percentage of all New Yorkers who fit that criteria.

Outside John Jay College, Mitchell, 21, a black senior from Canarsie, Brooklyn, said he was in the process of joining the force in 2014. (He declined to give his last name for fear of violating department rules.)

“All the cops there on Utica Avenue, the white cops, look scared,” he said of a thoroughfare that cuts through some minority areas. “What are you scared of? The black cops you see there, they’re relaxed.”

Former South Plainfield Police Captain Pleads Guilty to Sexually Exploiting a Minor

TRENTON, NJ—A former South Plainfield, New Jersey police captain admitted today to exploiting a minor girl by enticing her to live-stream sexually explicit acts via the Internet in exchange for payment, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.
Michael Grennier, 51, of South Plainfield, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson in Trenton federal court to an information charging him with one count of production of child pornography. Grennier was charged by complaint on February 19, 2013, and has been in custody since that date.
According to documents and evidence in this case and statements made in court:
On February 14, 2013, Grennier enticed a girl to perform sexually explicit acts and stream images of herself over the Internet while he watched remotely from his home computer. During the webcam session, Grennier exchanged text messages with the minor in which he directed her actions. Grennier admitted during his guilty plea proceeding that he promised to buy his victim clothing in exchange for her performance.
At the time of his arrest, Grennier was working for a private computer forensics firm. Prior to his retirement, he was a computer forensics specialist for the South Plainfield Police Department.
The production count carries a maximum potential penalty of 30 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. The mandatory minimum sentence for this offense is 15 years in prison. Sentencing is currently scheduled for March 27, 2014.
U.S. Attorney Fishman credited special agents of the FBI’s Child Exploitation Task Force, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Aaron T. Ford, for the investigation leading to today’s plea. He also thanked the South Plainfield Police Department, under the direction of Chief of Police James Parker, and the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office, under the direction of Acting Prosecutor Andrew Carey, for their assistance with the investigation.
The government is represented by Assistant U.S. Attorney Harvey Bartle, Attorney in Charge of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Trenton.