Ali Winston

“Not a big deal,” the lieutenant replied. “We were effecting a lawful arrest.”

Audible gasps were heard as the texts were read aloud Thursday during a police disciplinary hearing for Officer Daniel Pantaleo. He is accused of recklessly using a chokehold that led to Garner’s death after he was detained on the suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes.

The texts and testimony provided unsettling new details in one of the most wrenching cases of suspected police misconduct in New York.

Garner’s dying words “I can’t breathe” — repeated 11 times — set off protests around the country and became a powerful slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement.

The texts between the commander, Lt. Christopher Bannon, and the officer, Sgt. Dhanan Saminath, were revealed for the first time on the fourth day of the hearing for Pantaleo, who faces possible termination.

He has never faced criminal charges. A grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014. A federal civil rights inquiry has dragged on for years without charges being filed. The statute of limitations expires July 17, the fifth anniversary of Garner’s death.

An independent police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, brought the current charges against Pantaleo, which resulted in this week’s hearing.

The evidence at the hearing picked up events from the Police Department’s perspective while Garner — who was at least 6 feet 3 inches tall and had asthma so severe that he quit his job — was lying motionless on the ground on Bay Street near the Staten Island Ferry.

The communications started with Saminath messaging Bannon and telling him that Garner had been wrestled to the ground and then adding, “He’s most likely DOA,” using the acronym for dead on arrival. “He has no pulse,” Saminath wrote.

After acknowledging the message, Bannon wrote his follow-up note, now linking “Not a big deal” with “I can’t breathe” as the two defining quotations from Garner’s death.

“No big deal?” Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, angrily told reporters outside the Police Department’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, where the hearing was held. “If one of his loved ones was on the ground dead and someone came up to him and said, ‘It’s no big deal,’ how would you feel about it?”

During Monday’s testimony, the supervisor who oversaw the police’s internal review, Deputy Inspector Charles Barton, said that in 2015 he ordered the lead investigator to recommend disciplinary charges against Pantaleo. But the department’s internal prosecution unit never filed charges.

The medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Garner testified Wednesday that the chokehold “set into motion a lethal sequence” that led to the asthma attack that killed him.

Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, said his client used an approved maneuver, a “seatbelt hold,” that the police had been trained to use in incidents where people act violently or are resisting arrest.

But the commanding officer of the police academy, Deputy Inspector Richard Dee, testified Tuesday that Pantaleo’s actions meet “the definition of a chokehold.” He added that the seatbelt maneuver was neither taught or approved by the department in 2006, when Pantaleo went through the academy, nor in 2008, when he received training to become a plainclothes officer.

London said this week that his client had been a “scapegoat” and added that Garner was in poor health and that he “set these factors in motion by resisting arrest.”

London used the testimony of Bannon, Saminath and two other officers who were involved in the arrest to try to establish that his client was an exemplary officer and that Garner had been resisting arrest.

But the introduction of the text messages under cross-examination by prosecutors from the Civilian Complaint Review Board seemed to damage the defense’s case.

Bannon was pressed by one prosecutor, Suzanne O'Hare, to explain his text message.

“My reasoning,’’ he said, “was not to be malicious. It’s to make sure the officer knew he was put in a bad situation.”

“Would you agree that Eric Garner was put in a bad situation?” O’Hare said.

Bannon hesitated for several seconds. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said.

The testimony Thursday also focused on the low-level “quality of life’’ enforcement the police were conducting in the weeks before Garner’s death. Garner was arrested three times during that crackdown, the final one on the day he died.

“The arrest of Eric Garner was the result of a chain of decisions originating at the very highest levels of the NYPD,” Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said after the hearing. “Police officers who enforce quality of life offenses are not cowboys or free agents — they follow the direction of their supervisors, who are in turn responding to complaints from the community.”

Pantaleo’s supervisors testified that they considered him an outstanding worker.

“On a scale of 0 to 5, he was a 5.0,” Bannon said, adding that “Officer Pantaleo was one of the best officers I’ve supervised.’’

But after the hearing, Carr reminded reporters about Pantaleo’s disciplinary record, which was leaked to the news media and showed that he had several complaints filed against him.

“Look at the misconduct on his record,” Carr said. “Good workers don’t do illegal arrests; good workers don’t choke people to death.”

The text messages exchanged between Bannon and Saminath represent some of the first communications within the Police Department’s command structure about how this arrest ultimately resulted in Garner’s death.

At 4:11 p.m. Saminath sent a text to Bannon telling him that the enforcement effort in Tompkinsville Park had taken a turn for the worse.

“Danny and Justin went to collar Eric Garner and he resisted. When they took him down, Eric went into cardiac arrest. He’s unconscious. Might be DOA,” Saminath wrote.

“For the smokes?” Bannon responded.

“Yeah, they observed him selling,” Saminath replied. “Then Danny tried to grab him. They both went down. They called the bus ASAP. He’s most likely DOA. He has no pulse.’’

“OK, keep me posted. I’m still here,” Bannon wrote. Then he sent his next message, assuring Saminath that it was not a “big deal.’’

While Bannon’s reaction upset Garner’s family and supporters, he will not likely face any disciplinary action, according to the police. Too much time has elapsed since he sent the text for administrative charges to be filed.

This article originally appeared in <a id="22b9623b-634e-3730-a25f-4265b8afcb57" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/16/nyregion/eric-garner-pantaleo-trial.html">The New York Times</a>.

'Not a big deal,' police commander said as Eric Garner died

NEW YORK — A police commander in Staten Island received text messages from one of his officers in July 2014, informing him that a man identified as Eric Garner had been arrested, and was “most likely DOA” after he had been wrestled to the ground.

The doctor, Floriana Persechino, said the officer’s chokehold and the compression of Garner’s chest during his arrest on Staten Island in 2014 “set into motion a lethal sequence.”

Though Garner had high blood pressure and chronic asthma, Persechino, a veteran city medical examiner, stood by her finding that his death was a homicide caused by the officer’s use of force. “The chokehold is a significant initial factor of the cascade,” she said.

Persechino testified at a disciplinary hearing for Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who faces possible dismissal over charges of reckless use of a chokehold and intentional restriction of breathing.

Garner died during a struggle with several police officers in July 2014 near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. The police had stopped him because they believed he was selling untaxed cigarettes.

His death set off protests and contributed to a national reckoning over how the police treat people in poor and minority neighborhoods, with his last words — “I can’t breathe” — becoming a rallying cry for a national movement against police brutality.

A grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014 on criminal charges. A federal civil rights inquiry has dragged on for years without charges being filed. The statute of limitations expires July 17, the fifth anniversary of Garner’s death.

Last fall, the police commissioner, James P. O’Neill, decided to move ahead with the disciplinary hearing, giving the first public airing of the evidence against Pantaleo.

Narrating graphic photos of Garner’s body, Persechino said Wednesday that internal bleeding visible in four layers of soft tissue from his neck indicated the use of a chokehold that set off the asthma attack.

While Persechino was being cross-examined, Pantaleo’s lawyers and prosecutors from the Civilian Complaint Review Board exchanged heated words, as one of the officer’s lawyers, Stuart London, suggested that Garner was in poor health and caused his own death by resisting arrest.

Persechino is the third official to testify this week that Pantaleo used a prohibited chokehold on Garner. On Monday, two internal affairs investigators testified that they had recommended in 2015 that Pantaleo face disciplinary charges for using the banned technique.

And on Tuesday morning, the commanding officer of the police academy, Deputy Inspector Richard Dee, said what Pantaleo can be seen doing in a bystander’s video of the arrest — wrapping an arm around Garner’s neck from behind and squeezing — “meets the definition of a chokehold.”

London, the defense lawyer, has argued Pantaleo was trying to use a safe takedown technique taught in the Police Academy, known as a “seatbelt” hold.

But Dee testified that the seatbelt maneuver was not taught or approved by the department in 2006, when Pantaleo went through the academy, nor in 2008, when he received training to become a plainclothes officer.

The autopsy photographs shown in a hearing room at Police Headquarters on Wednesday grimly illustrated the damage caused to Garner’s huge frame by Pantaleo’s left forearm during the struggle.

Using a laser pointer, Persechino methodically explained the physical trauma visible on the layer of the muscle and soft tissue inside of Garner’s neck, pointing out a “band of hemorrhaging” that deepened from dark red to purple.

Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, left the courtroom before the photos were shown. “I wasn’t going to be able to sit there and look at photos of my child,” Carr said. “It’s not getting any easier. It’s very emotional being here.”

On cross-examination, London attempted to challenge Persechino’s findings. He repeatedly asked her about Garner’s other ailments: He was obese, weighing 395 pounds, had chronic asthma and an enlarged heart almost twice the size of a healthy person.

“Any stress he engaged in would probably be more deadly for him than a normal person,” London suggested to the doctor.

London also cited a report from the Police Department’s chief surgeon that blamed Garner for his own death, because he refused to comply with orders from Pantaleo and his partner.

“He obviously resisted arrest, your honor,” London said at one point during the cross-examination.

Suzanne O’Hare, a prosecutor for the watchdog agency, immediately objected. “Is counsel testifying now?” she asked.

London drew another objection from O’Hare when he said of Garner: “Had he just accepted a summons for untaxed cigarettes, none of this would have happened.”

On Tuesday, Dee said the techniques Pantaleo used on Garner during their fatal struggle violated the department’s decades-old ban on chokeholds.

Both in the academy and during specialized training, officers are repeatedly taught not to use chokeholds or restrict someone’s breathing, he said.

Dee, a former narcotics and gang supervisor, also testified that the officers’ decision to wrestle Garner to the ground instead of continuing to talk to him was questionable.

“Would you have put your hands on Mr. Garner?” asked Jonathan Fogel, one of the prosecutors.

“I would have waited for backup, for uniformed officers to arrive, and I would make one more appeal,” Dee replied.

The disciplinary hearing is being closely watched by many elected officials, who view it as a test of O’Neill’s commitment to improving the often fraught relationship between the police and the city’s poorer residents.

“The public is watching,” Councilman Donovan Richards, a Queens Democrat, told O’Neill at a City Council hearing Wednesday. Richards added that people will “be able to see clearly from this case how serious you are about holding officers who break the law accountable.”

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, O’Neill would not commit to uphold whatever verdict Judge Rosemarie Maldonado, who is overseeing the hearing, reaches, nor the penalty she recommends.

“I’m not going to prejudge it,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="3ede3dd6-57ff-355c-aad2-eceb1e4f4432" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/nyregion/eric-garner-death-daniel-pantaleo-chokehold.html">The New York Times</a>.

Chokehold caused Eric Garner's fatal asthma attack, doctor says

NEW YORK — The doctor who performed an autopsy on Eric Garner testified Wednesday that a police officer choked him with enough force that it triggered a “lethal cascade” of events, ending in a fatal asthma attack.

And in Brooklyn, a plainclothes officer pinned an 18-year-old against a lamp post, his forearm choking off the teenager’s air supply while he was patted down.

The incidents all happened in the last three years, after the Police Department spent $35 million to retrain patrol officers not to employ strangleholds after the death of Eric Garner.

Records of complaints show the banned holds are still being used by some officers, and only a tiny fraction of officers accused of chokeholds have been found guilty and have faced discipline. When they do, the punishment meted out has been remedial training and the loss of vacation time. None have been fired.

The department’s record in stopping the use of chokeholds is likely to come under increased scrutiny when Daniel Pantaleo, the officer accused of choking Garner, faces a departmental trial scheduled to start Monday. He could be fired if he is found guilty.

Garner, who was in poor health, died in 2014 after Pantaleo put him in a chokehold and he and other officers compressed his chest against the ground while arresting him on Staten Island on charges of selling loose cigarettes. A grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo on criminal charges.

Stuart London, who is representing Pantaleo in his department trial, said in an interview that his client used a “seat belt maneuver” and at no point restricted Garner’s breathing. “My client was just attempting to control him,” London said. “It was never a chokehold.”

Garner’s death, and his protest, “I can’t breathe,” became a flash point in the Black Lives Matter movement and the national debate over deadly police force.

Police officials can claim some success in reducing the number of chokehold complaints since his death. Last year, 133 complaints were made, the fewest in a decade. Chokehold complaints have steadily declined every year since Garner’s death five years ago, when they peaked at 244 allegations.

At the same time, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, an oversight agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, has substantiated significantly more complaints each year than it did before the Garner case, finding evidence that 40 officers have used chokeholds since the beginning of 2015.

Still, only 10 of those officers are known to have faced discipline for their actions, the board’s data shows. All told, less than 2% of the 820 complaints over the last five years are known to have led to an officer being disciplined. Some cases are pending, and in other cases the outcome is not released.

Most officers who were disciplined received either remedial training or the loss of paid vacation days. In at least three cases, the police commissioner overturned a guilty verdict against the officers.

The Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993 during Raymond Kelly’s first term as police commissioner. Yet chokeholds continued to crop up in complaints made to the review board.

After Garner’s death, the police commissioner at the time, William Bratton, promised to retrain officers and crack down on the dangerous practice.

“That’s where the training effort is,” he said at a City Council hearing, “to try to improve upon their capabilities to make these arrests with the minimum use of force appropriate.”

Yet Bratton also changed the department’s policy in June 2016, providing an “exigent circumstances” exemption to what was previously a blanket ban.

Police officials have defended loosening the policy, saying it takes into account special situations, like terrorist attacks or cases in which officers are cornered or outnumbered.

Critics of the Police Department, however, said the change sent the wrong message. “It tells you everything you need to know that two years after Eric Garner was killed, the department actually made it easier for officers to justify the use of a chokehold,” said Councilman Rory Lancman, D-Queens, who has introduced a bill that would make it misdemeanor for the police to use chokeholds.

When the department retrained the force on physical restraints after Garner’s death, some officers said the $35 million refresher was a waste of time and lacked hands-on scenarios.

According to Eugene O’Donnell, a former lieutenant and a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, one reason the practice persists is that most officers lack training in better ways to restrain people. “They’re minimally trained,” he said. “It’s all improvisation, all the time.”

Assistant Chief Matthew Pontillo, who plays a central role in training and policymaking, said the Police Department’s policy on chokeholds is sound and consistent with contemporary policing practices.

“The new policy is explicit: It makes clear that force must be reasonable under the circumstance, it requires de-escalation when safe and appropriate, and it makes clear that deadly force is only to be used to protect life,” Pontillo said.

Inspector Richard Dee, who oversees recruit training for the department, said recruits are taught four or five methods of taking someone into custody without restricting someone’s breathing, including arm bars, in which officers move a suspect’s straightened arm behind his back, and takedowns, a kind of controlled fall.

Still, three recent complaints offer a window into how chokeholds continue to be used.

One came from Thomas Medina, who testified that Detective Fabio Nunez choked him from behind as he was being arrested and put into a patrol car in July.

The incident happened outside a car dealership on 206th Street in Manhattan. A video shows Medina walking into the dealership after speaking with Nunez and his partner.

Nunez then followed Medina, grabbed him by his neck and forced him up against a car. Then, the detective wrapped his right arm around Medina’s neck and choked him for 22 seconds, as a second officer tried to handcuff him, the videotape showed.

Medina broke free, with the handcuffs still around one wrist, and Nunez shocked him with a Taser before arresting him on charges of felony assault, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. That case is slated for a departmental trial.

Nunez did not respond to a request for comment.

Another incident, which reached the trial room in February, involved three plainclothes officers who roughed up a teenager in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, who they thought had a gun.

In August 2016, the officers got out of a car and tried to arrest Lakee McKinney, 18, outside his apartment building on Pulaski Street. When he resisted, Officer David Mercado punched his face and then pressed his right forearm against the teenager’s throat for half a minute while patting him down, the teenager testified.

“I couldn’t breathe — every time I was trying to speak, he applied pressure,” McKinney testified in February. He said the officers did not identify themselves, and he thought he was being robbed. “He treated me as if I were a dumb person, like I was a piece of meat,” McKinney said.

Mercado, who was later promoted to sergeant, claimed he was investigating an anonymous tip of an armed man at the corner where McKinney was standing. No weapon was found.

Mercado’s lawyer, John Tynan, argued that the teenager had resisted the officers and that his client’s actions were justified and within department guidelines.

The outcome of Mercado’s case remains secret under New York state law. He faced a potential loss of 15 vacation days.

A third recent trial centered on an arrest made in July 2017 after a drunken brawl in front of a pool hall in the South Bronx.

One of the brawlers, Manny Gonzalez, was thrown to the ground by an officer, handcuffed and marched to a squad car.

A video of the incident, shown during the trial, showed an officer, Majeed Arif, escorting him. Arif then grabbed Gonzalez from behind, wrapped his fingers around his neck and squeezed. A bystander yelled, “You’re choking him — you’re wilding, you’re wilding.”

Tynan, who was also Arif’s lawyer, argued that his client had not grabbed Gonzalez’s neck. He said the roughness seen in the video was justified because Gonzalez had been “hopped up on beer muscles and his outrage” and “policing is a contact sport.”

Simone Manigo, a Civilian Complaint Review Board lawyer who brought the case, scoffed at those explantations for Arif’s actions. “A chokehold is a chokehold,” Manigo said. The outcome of the case was also kept secret under state law.

This article originally appeared in <a id="53baea16-3527-3a69-a4a7-d7efb12b52fe" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/nyregion/eric-garner-death-chokeholds.html">The New York Times</a>.

Despite Eric Garner's Death and a $35 Million Program, Chokeholds Still Used by Police

NEW YORK — In the Bronx, a man was choked from behind as an officer frog-marched him to a squad car. In Manhattan, a detective responding to a noise complaint wrapped his arm around a man’s neck and squeezed for 22 seconds.

Despite Eric Garner's death and a $35 million program, chokeholds still used by police

These men, and 13 others, each showed up at a house in Bergen County, New Jersey, earlier this month, where they expected to meet an underage boy or girl they had been talking to online.

Instead, they were met at the house by police officers.

The teacher, the police officer and the minister were among the men from New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania who were arrested during a weeklong sting operation aimed at catching people seeking sexual encounters online with underage teenagers.

State and federal investigators created fake profiles on popular dating and chat platforms — such as Kik, MeetMe and Skout — and posed as teenagers. The officers identified themselves in online chats as 14- or 15-year-old boys and girls.

Prosecutors gave the following account: The undercover officers were contacted by the 16 men, who in some cases sent explicit photographs. The men, who were attempting to arrange sexual encounters, then agreed to go to a house in Bergen County, where they expected to find the young people they had contacted at home alone.

The investigation followed virtually the same playbook as an operation in September, during which a police sergeant, a firefighter and a nurse were apprehended.

“I hate to say this, but if we extended that op on a weekly basis, we’d pick up at least 16 defendants a week,” the New Jersey attorney general, Gurbir S. Grewal, said at a news conference Wednesday.

The men arrested in the recent sting operation faced a range of charges in New Jersey, including attempted sexual assault on a minor, luring, possession of child pornography and attempted debauching the morals of a child.

The other defendants ranged in age from 26 to 55 and included drivers for two ride-share companies, an executive for an internet service provider, a bank branch office manager, a barbershop owner, a dental hygienist and two takeout food deliverymen.

The defendants were formally charged last week and all but one were released after detention hearings. They have been ordered to use the internet only for work purposes and are barred from unsupervised contact with minors.

Investigators said children can be susceptible to sexual predators online. Many gaming, chat and dating apps lack safeguards to keep children from being contacted surreptitiously by people seeking to lure them into sexual encounters, even while in the company of their parents.

“When we think back to the luring of subjects in playgrounds with a puppy or candy, it is a totally different ballgame now, with the advent of the internet and with these apps that make it so easy for predators to prey on our most vulnerable,” Col. Patrick J. Callahan, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said.

The state police were helped in the sting by agents from the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations.

None of the apps used by investigators during this investigation have age verification features, the attorney general said. The officers also used popular games, such as “Fortnite” and “Minecraft,” and the gaming chat platform Discord.

“It’s incumbent on app developers to do more to ensure that those apps are used by age-appropriate customers,” Grewal said.

One of the men arrested, Luis Gonzalez Palacio of Weehawken, New Jersey, had more than 13,000 files of child pornography on his computer when he was taken into custody, the state police said.

Investigators said they are examining electronic devices seized from the defendants, and more charges will be brought if they find illegal sexual content.

Another man caught during the operation, Jason Keizer of Garfield, New Jersey, was awaiting sentencing in Bergen County on an earlier charge of possession of child pornography, and a judge ordered him detained on Wednesday pending trial, officials said. Keizer was one of the individuals who showed up to the house used by law enforcement to lure would-be predators.

Tuchol, the police officer from Ridgewood, was arrested on April 15 at the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in Hackensack, even though he had shown up to the sting location expecting to meet a 15-year-old girl, according to authorities.

In addition to child exploitation charges, Tuchol was also charged with possession of anabolic steroids and drug paraphernalia. He has since been suspended from the Ridgewood Police Department. The social media profiles he used that were uncovered during the investigation featured a photograph of himself in uniform.

“I’m deeply concerned and I’m deeply disappointed that people in positions of trust are part of the defendants in this case,” Grewal said.

Tuchol’s attorney, Richard Potter, said his client is “a man of great character” and a “terrific officer” who has been commended by the Ridgewood Police Department since becoming an officer four years ago. He declined to comment on the allegations against his client, who he said has pleaded not guilty.

Roth’s attorney, Samuel Braverman, declined to comment on the charges against his client, who has been suspended from his job as a teacher at the High School of Computers and Technology in the Bronx.

Keizer and Arroyo could not immediately be reached for comment on Wednesday and their lawyers did not respond to messages left by a reporter.

The purpose of these sting operations, Callahan said, is to put fear and doubt into the minds of people who are tempted to use cyberspace to lure children into sexual encounters.

“If they think they’re talking to a 14-year-old girl or boy, I hope in the back of their mind they think they’re talking to a New Jersey state trooper or an investigator in a prosecutor’s office,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="6602d587-5db2-3d74-af83-234b6fce0a34" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/nyregion/underage-dating-sting-operation.html">The New York Times</a>.

They arranged to meet underage teens for sex, instead the police were waiting

Kevin Roth is a high school teacher in New York. Peter Tuchol Jr. is a police officer from a suburban New Jersey town. Roger Arroyo is a traveling minister from Philadelphia.

They were contacted by the 16 men, who in some cases sent explicit photographs. Prosecutors said the men were attempting to arrange sexual encounters. The men then agreed to go to a house in Bergen County, where they expected to find the young people they had contacted at home alone.

The purpose of these sting operations, Callahan said, is to put fear and doubt into the minds of people would are tempted to use cyberspace to lure children into sexual encounters.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/nyregion/underage-dating-sting-operation.html" id="6602d587-5db2-3d74-af83-234b6fce0a34">The New York Times</a>.

They Arranged to Meet Underage Teens for Sex. Instead the Police Were Waiting

An ax covered in blood was recovered from a trash compactor in the housing development, the New York Police Department said, although it was not immediately clear if it was used in the attacks.

A 21-year-old woman had called for an Uber outside the Bushwick Houses complex around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said. The driver saw she was bleeding heavily from cuts to her head and stomach and called 911.

While she was being taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, the woman told emergency medical workers that she had been attacked by her former boyfriend and that her daughter and a female friend were still in her eighth-floor apartment, police said.

Police officers arriving at the apartment discovered a grisly scene: a partially decapitated woman on the floor, with some of her fingers severed and multiple stab wounds. Police identified the woman as 20-year-old Savannah Rivera.

A 4-year-old girl was found unharmed in a rear bedroom, police said. The child was taken to Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center for evaluation. The wounded woman was in serious condition Saturday night, officials said.

Police were questioning a person of interest, said Deputy Chief Michael Kemper, the commanding officer of Brooklyn North Detectives. He said that what happened was a “terrible, vicious attack” that left both victims with deep lacerations.

The person of interest was a 24-year-old man who previously had a romantic relationship with the wounded woman, a police official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk publicly about the case.

Kemper told reporters at a briefing that both women knew the person being questioned by police but he declined to elaborate.

Rivera was the mother of a 4-year-old boy and lived at a low-rise public housing development not far from the Bushwick Houses.

In an interview at her family’s apartment, which was decorated for Easter with colored plastic eggs hanging from the vestibule ceiling, her older sister, Tatiana Cabrera, remembered Rivera as “a very quiet girl” who “liked to party.”

About a year ago, Cabrera said, her sister began hanging around the wounded woman.

“Me and her had problems for years,” Cabrera said, referring to the wounded woman, who had not been publicly identified. “I told Savannah that her downfall would be this girl. I told her to stop hanging out with her.”

Rivera’s relatives said that her mother died in 2009 and that Rivera and two of her sisters were raised by their grandmother.

The grandmother, Elsa Collazo, said that when she learned of the killing, “I wanted to die.”

Rivera’s son sat on a couch, happily playing a video game. His fifth birthday, his grandmother said, will be April 30.

“When he is old enough, I will tell him about his mother,” Collazo said. “She was a good mother.”

Outside the red brick building where the attack took place, residents reacted with a mix of shock and resignation.

Rochelle McGee, a resident of another building in the Bushwick Houses who works with a local anti-violence intervention group, said she learned about the killing on Facebook.

Renee Hamilton, who lives on the 16th floor of the building where the attack took place, recognized the wounded woman in a photograph.

“I ride the elevator with her in the morning when she takes her little daughter to school,” Hamilton said. “I’m going to pray for her.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/20/nyregion/ax-murderer-brooklyn.html" id="52543c41-59ab-3c87-ae5c-93be60625bef">The New York Times</a>.

Bloody Ax Recovered at Homicide Scene in Brooklyn, Police Say

NEW YORK — Police on Saturday were investigating the gruesome killing of a woman in a Brooklyn public housing development in an attack that left another woman seriously injured.

An ax covered in blood was recovered from a trash compactor in the housing development, the New York Police Department said, though it was not immediately clear if it was used in the attacks.

A 21-year-old woman called for an Uber outside the housing complex, the Bushwick Houses on Flushing Avenue, at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, police said. The driver saw that she was bleeding heavily from cuts to her head and stomach and called 911.

While she was being taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center, the woman told emergency medical services personnel that she had been attacked by her former boyfriend and that her daughter and a female friend were still in her eighth-floor apartment, police said.

Police officers arriving at the apartment discovered a partially decapitated woman in her 20s on the floor, with some of her fingers severed and multiple stab wounds. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

A 4-year-old girl was found unharmed in a rear bedroom, police said. The child was taken to Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center for evaluation. No arrests had been made as of Saturday afternoon.

Rochelle McGee, a resident of another building in the Bushwick Houses who works with a local anti-violence intervention group, said she learned of the killing on Facebook.

Neighbors identified the dead woman as a friend of the wounded woman.

NEW YORK — The police on Saturday were investigating the gruesome killing of a woman in a Brooklyn public housing development that also left a second woman seriously injured.

Bloody Ax recovered at homicide scene in Brooklyn, police say

Prosecutors did not quite know what they had but worked to identify precisely who had withdrawn the money, which exceeded $1 million.

What resulted was a two-year investigation that uncovered a multimillion-dollar drug operation on the dark web, a corner of the internet people can visit anonymously with special browsers and make purchases with virtual currencies like bitcoin and Ethereum.

In recent years, drug trafficking on the dark web has exploded as drug traffickers and other criminals have discovered that its anonymity makes it ideal for illicit transactions using cryptocurrencies.

“We have a cybercrime crisis that’s not yet fully appreciated,” Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, said at a news conference.

Prosecutors said three New Jersey men were behind an online store called Sinmed that sold and shipped illegal drugs to buyers in 43 states, Puerto Rico and Washington. Their products included heroin-laced fentanyl, counterfeit Xanax tablets, ketamine, LSD, date-rape drug GHB, steroids and methamphetamine.

The men — Chester Anderson, 44; Jarrette Codd, 41; and Ronald MacCarty, 51 — then converted at least $2.3 million in cryptocurrency from their sales by using it to load prepaid debit cards and withdrawing cash from ATMs, according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The three men used MacCarty’s cellphone store in Asbury Park, New Jersey — The Wireless Spot — to house a drug factory with two industrial power mixers, punch dies to imprint pills with brand names and four pill presses, each of which could each produce 16,000 pills per hour, prosecutors said.

Sinmed advertised its narcotics using two storefronts on a dark web shopping site called Dream Market, where, like its infamous predecessor, the Silk Road, a plethora of illegal drugs and other goods can be bought, the authorities said.

Investigators from the Manhattan district attorney’s office posed as buyers on the dark web and purchased over 10,000 tablets of counterfeit Xanax from Sinmed, along with significant quantities of GHB and ketamine, Vance said.

Federal investigators from the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Postal Service also took part in the investigation, along with the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office and the South Brunswick Police.

To make their deliveries seem innocuous, Sinmed labeled its drug-laden envelopes with the return addresses of Manhattan law firms, real estate brokers and talent entertainment agencies, prosecutors said.

Anderson and MacCarty used a shell company to buy large quantities of microcrystalline cellulose, which is used to make pharmaceutical pills, as well as alprazolam, the active ingredient in Xanax, from chemical supply companies in China, prosecutors said.

The materials were used to cook up massive quantities of counterfeit drugs. When the authorities raided Codd’s home in Jamesburg, New Jersey, this month, they found five large orange buckets filled to the brim with at least 420,000 pills of fake Xanax, worth between $2 million and $4 million on the street. Investigators also found a “cookbook” with recipes for several illicit drugs, including GHB.

Anderson, Codd and MacCarty were arrested at separate locations in Central New Jersey on April 4 and arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan Supreme Court on charges of conspiracy and money laundering. Anderson was also charged with drug trafficking.

“These defendants perpetrated a yearslong drug-dealing enterprise and used sophisticated tech to reach customers across the United States,” Dan Haier, an assistant district attorney, told the court.

All three men entered not guilty pleas. Justice Maxwell Wiley set bail at $1 million for Anderson and $500,000 each for Codd and MacCarty.

Prosecutors said Anderson, whom they described as a ringleader, took extensive precautions to avoid detection, renting cars to drop off his drug deliveries, sleeping at hotels and using a GPS jamming device that scrambled a tracking device investigators placed on one of his cars.

Anderson, a software engineer, was convicted of attempted armed robbery in New Jersey in 2014 and was diverted from prison into drug treatment. His lawyer, Taylor Koss, said Anderson had been sober for five years and committed the robbery while in the throes of drug addiction.

Neither Codd nor MacCarty has criminal convictions.

Haier said during court proceedings that the opacity of dark web transactions in cryptocurrencies had hampered prosecutors’ efforts to find out how much money Sinmed took in and to whom it sold drugs.

NEW YORK — In 2017, the Manhattan district attorney’s office received a tip: Unusually large amounts of cash were being withdrawn from ATMs throughout the city, including a series of transactions at a special teller machine that converted cryptocurrency to cash.

Ali Winston

Articles written by the author

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