No Charges For Long Island Cop Who Fatally Struck Teen: AG

LONG ISLAND, NY — New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation has ruled that a prosecutor would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Suffolk police officer whose cruiser reportedly fatally struck a Shirley teen committed a crime, so no criminal charges will be pursued.

A report on the investigation was released on Wednesday.

After a thorough investigation, which included a review and analysis of video footage from a nearby home, interviews with the officer, and civilian witnesses, and comprehensive legal analysis, the office determined that on the evening of Sept. 9, 2023, an officer was driving southbound on William Floyd Parkway responding to a medical emergency in a marked police vehicle with the emergency lights and siren activated, James office said.

The parkway, which has four main lanes, including two southbound and two northbound, is divided by a grass median, and the southbound roadway, north of Adobe Drive, has two additional lanes, a left turn lane and a right turn lane.

The posted speed limit on William Floyd Parkway near Adobe Drive is 30 MPH, and as the officer approached the intersection at Adobe Drive and Beacon Street, she maneuvered around a car stopped ahead of her and entered the travel lane to the right of the left-turn lane and proceeded into the intersection through a green traffic light, traveling at a speed over 85 MPH, according to James' office.

When the officer entered the intersection, she struck the teen, who was riding his bicycle east from Beacon Street across William Floyd Parkway, and he was taken to a local hospital, where he died from his injuries on Sept. 13, 2023, James' office said.

Under the office analysis of New York’s Vehicle and Traffic Law, Penal Law, and case law from the state's highest court, an officer who causes a death while properly responding to an emergency in a police vehicle cannot be charged with a crime unless the officer acts recklessly or intentionally, according to James' office.

The criminal charge that requires recklessness is second-degree manslaughter, in which a person is guilty when they recklessly cause the death of another person, with "recklessly” meaning that the person consciously disregards a “substantial and unjustifiable” risk of death and that their actions are a “gross deviation” from a reasonable standard of conduct, according to James' office.

In this case, while the officer caused the teen's death, the evidence does not establish "beyond a reasonable doubt" that her conduct was "a gross deviation from the standard that would have been observed by a reasonable officer in the same circumstances, or that she "consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk of death," James' office said.

The officer was speeding because she was responding to an emergency, and she took precautionary measures by activating her vehicle’s emergency lights and siren, and when she saw the teen, she tried to swerve around him, and there was no evidence that she was impaired by drugs or alcohol, or that she was otherwise distracted at the time of the crash, according to James' office.

Determining the possibility of alcohol impairment is an essential component of investigating vehicular crashes, and in this case, the officer was never administered a Portable Breath Test after the incident, James' office said.

While there is no evidence that the officer driving the car was impaired by drugs or alcohol, the office recommends that all precinct supervisors be trained in the administration of PBTs and field sobriety tests so that any on-duty or off-duty police officer, or any civilian, involved in a motor vehicle collision can be tested as close to the time of the collision as practicable to ensure the most accurate results, according to James' office.

The office also recommends Suffolk police equip all police vehicles with dashboard cameras that automatically record when officers activate the police car’s emergency lights to foster transparency, accountability, and evidence gathering, according to James.

In this case, the officer’s vehicle was equipped with a dashcam, but the officer did not activate the dashcam when she activated the car’s emergency lights or sirens.

The police department declined comment.

The teen's mother, Claudia Stinson, could not be immediately reached.

In an interview with Newsday, she said that she did not think justice was on her son's side and that "the investigation is not quite right to me."

She said that she was standing on her deck the night of the collision and heard it, but did not hear sirens before the crash, and that police relied too much on the account of the officer and witnesses, saying "Something doesn’t sound right."

"This investigation seems to be covering a mistake. This investigation did not go deep enough... She’s still human and can get distracted. You still can make mistakes, and it makes me angry that the cop may not be accepting that she made a mistake," she told the outlet.

Stinson reportedly filed a wrongful death lawsuit back in November.