Cecilia Reyes controlled her outrage but not her tears as she expressed her feelings about the failure of a grand jury to indict the officer who killed her son, Noel Polanco, last year following a high-speed chase on the Grand Central Parkway.
“But I’m not giving up,” she sobbed. “This is hard and it’s never going to go away. He is still a murderer, no matter what, in my eyes.” Seated in the offices at the National Action Network (NAN) last Saturday, Reyes was comforted and advised by her attorney Robert Mijuca and Michael Hardy, a spokesperson for the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was traveling at the time.
“Our loved ones, our innocents should be granted the same justice, the same rights, as other Americans,” said Hardy. “As we have learned over the years, the prosecutor controls the grand jury, and they can indict a ham sandwich.” But apparently not a police officer.
Polanco, 22, was killed last October near LaGuardia Airport by Detective Hassan Hamdy, who fired one bullet through an open car window, hitting Polanco in the abdomen. He was rushed to New York Hospital in Queens and died an hour later.
According to the police report, Hamdy fired when he said Polanco was reaching for something he presumed to be a gun. But Diane Deferrari, a passenger in the front seat of the car, said the police seemed upset that Polanco’s driving had cut them off. One of the drivers gave them a middle finger and began screaming obscenities at them as Hamdy and another officer approached the car.
“As soon as we stopped, they were rushing the car,” Deferrari said in a phone interview with a reporter. “It was like an army.” No weapon was found in the car, and Polanco, a National Guardsman, according to Deferrari, had his hands on the steering wheel the entire time.
“My son was a great kid,” Reyes said, repeating the same words she said last year when she and other family members appeared at NAN. “He wanted to be a police officer. All I want now is justice.”
“The police investigate crimes,” said Mijuca, “and the DA prosecutes them. They are dependent on each other.” And that dependency, he added, brings about a conflict of interest when it comes to the district attorney investigating a police officer’s crime.
He said they are planning to appeal to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and then move on to a lawsuit against the NYPD and Hamdy, who has been assigned to desk duty as the investigation continues.
“Eventually, we may have to demand a special prosecutor,” said Hardy.
He added that the Queens district attorney cannot comment on the grand jury’s decision, since everything is done in secrecy–another matter that perturbed him.
The whole affair also upset Tamika Mallory, a spokesperson for NAN, who aroused the crowd when she listed a number of injustices against young Black and Brown men. “We stand with the Polanco family,” she screamed. “Are you with me?” The crowd was clear in its thunderous response.
