No Justice For Kenneth Chamberlain, Cops Won't Face Charges

Officer Anthony Carelli

A Westchester County grand jury cleared the White Plains police officer who shot and killed a 68-year-old retired Marine inside his apartment, officials announced Thursday.
The family slammed the decision as a “blatant cover up” and said it would request a Justice Department investigation.
Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore called the killing of Kenneth Chamberlain “a tragedy on many levels” — but not a crime.
“After due deliberation on the evidence presented in this matter, the grand jury found that there was no reasonable cause to vote an indictment,” she said.
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The racial slur one officer flung at Chamberlain before another cop killed him was explained as an effort to “distract” him, DiFiore said.
“The use of (racial epithets) by anyone, let alone a public servant who is sworn to uphold the public good, is intolerable,” she said.
“I have been assured by the White Plains Police Department that they will be reviewing this behavior,” DiFiore said.
She said she was ordering “a top to bottom review on the use of force against emotionally disturbed people.”
Chamberlain was shot and killed Nov. 19 in his own apartment by cops who initially responded to a mistaken medical alert and then ignored his repeated drunken shouts to go away and leave him alone.
After an hour-long standoff, the cops took the apartment door off its hinges, and shot Chamberlain with a Taser and a beanbag gun before White Plains Officer Anthony Carelli put a bullet in his chest.
Cops said Chamberlain was coming at them with a knife and a hatchet.
Chamberlain’s son, Kenneth Chamberlain Jr., called the failure to indict Carelli a “blatant cover up of the murderous tactics” used by the White Plains police.
“I have to question what evidence was presented to the grand jury,” he said. “It is hard to put trust in a system that I feel has failed me already.”
He and his lawyers will ask the U.S. Attorney General for a criminal investigation, he said.
The grand jury began hearing the case against Carelli three weeks ago, after national attention on in the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida awoke new interest in the November shooting of the elderly black heart patient in Westchester.
Randolph McLaughlin, one of the lawyers representing the Chamberlain family, noted that public pressure in the two cases produced markedly different results.
“It’s easier to indict a vigilante in Florida than it is to get a cop indicted in this county. That’s an outrage,” he said.
McLaughlin said, “Mr. Chamberlain was at all times in his house” and that officers “brutally” killed him after “threatening him, taunting him and using racial slurs.”
“We are asking for a criminal indictment from (Attorney General) Eric Holder,” he said.
White Plains PBA President Robert Riley thanked the grand jury for reaching “the obvious conclusion that Officer Carelli’s actions were necessary and justified.”
“Every police officer’s worst nightmare is to be forced to take a life,” Riley said.
The grand jury had a lot of evidence to work with, including video from the Taser gun and audio from the medical call box in Chamberlain’s apartment.
Chamberlain’s family questioned why cops broke down the door after Chamberlain repeatedly said he didn’t need help and the medical alert company cancelled their police call.
The Daily News revealed last month that Carelli was being sued for race-based brutality, as were two other White Plains cops working that night.
Police records showed that White Plains police were often called to Chamberlain’s apartment to deal with his yelling.