New York City to Pay $2 Million after NYPD Shooting of Unarmed Black Teen

 
Cop Still on Active Duty  - Weak Prosecutors Never Sought Criminal Charges 
The final chapter in the Timothy Stansbury Jr. case ended Wednesday when the city agreed to pay his family $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed after the unarmed Brooklyn teen was shot and killed by a cop patrolling a housing project, those involved in the case said.

 While the settlement gave Stansbury's family a sense of closure, "there's a certain kind of emptiness there," said a friend who asked not to be named. "It's like they're mourning all over again, because nothing is going to bring him back."

 Stansbury, 19, and never in trouble with the law, was fatally shot by Officer Richard Neri in a rooftop stairwell inside the Louis Armstrong Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, on Jan. 24, 2004.

 Stansbury, who lived in the Armstrong Houses, and two friends were heading to a party and planned to get there by crossing from the roof of one building to another.

 Neri, patrolling the roof with his partner, shot Stansbury as the cops were opening the rooftop door to get into the building.

 The next day, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said "there appears to be no justification" for the shooting, a characterization that infuriated the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, whose delegates took a symbolic "no confidence" vote and demanded Kelly's ouster.

 A grand jury voted not to indict Neri, who said he fired accidentally. Neri later became a union delegate. He was suspended for 30 days earlier this year following a departmental trial and has been on full duty since, though he works a desk job and has not been given back his service weapon, police sources said.

 Stansbury's mother, Phyllis Clayburne, who in her job as a crossing guard is an NYPD employee, was a visible presence at a rally after the fatal police shooting of Sean Bell in Queens on Nov. 25. At the time of Neri's suspension, she likened it to being spat in the face.

 Greg Longworth, Neri's lawyer, had no comment.

 Kenneth Ramseur, the lawyer for the Stansbury family, confirmed the settlement but said the family had asked him not to discuss it.

 A lawyer for the city issued a statement that called Stansbury's death "a tragedy."

 "We believe the settlement is in the best interests of all parties and hope it will provide some small measure of comfort," said Ken Sasmor, senior attorney for the corporation counsel's office.

 At the Louis Armstrong Houses yesterday, Greer Nelson, 42, a friend of Stansbury's mother and grandmother, said of the settlement, "Nothing is worth his life. Not $2 million, not $3 or $4 million. Nothing is worth a life. They just took him for no reason."

 Looking at the ground, he said, "The mother -- I still see the sadness in her face. It looks like she aged 10 years from the whole ordeal." [MORE] and [MORE]