By Matthew Futterman, Staff Reporter
In a voice cracking with emotion, Marjorica Rosario told a packed auditorium at Lincoln Hospital last Wednesday that a former security guard for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani fatally shot her son Anthony in the back last month.
"There's no justification for what they did," Rosario said at a hearing of the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board. "They took my precious son away from me. My son had dreams, and they cut them short."
The Rosarios say their son was simply accompanying his friends to pick up money owed to them by a Morris Heights woman performing illegal immigration services. But the police contend that Rosario was taking part in an armed robbery and was shot by Det. Patrick Brosnan, the former Giuliani guard, after reaching for his gun.
More than 20 residents of the South Bronx, most of them black and Hispanic, spoke of being beaten, spat on and verbally abused by police officers. They told board members and local leaders that they were tired of being brutalized by a police force they often saw breaking the law instead of upholding it.
In response to the rising number of complaints of police brutality, the review board has formed a task force that will investigate police behavior in the 44th, 45th, 46th and 48th precincts.
But the message might not be getting through to those who need to hear it most -- the police. Despite an official invitation to the hearing from Hector Soto, the review board's executive director, neither Police Commissioner William Bratton nor any officer or representative from his department made the trip to Lincoln Hospital.
"I don't think we would have added anything to a grievance hearing," said Capt. Bob Mednick of borough headquarters. Mednick said he would not have been allowed to comment on individual cases or ongoing investigations. Also, added Mednick, a uniformed police presence might have inhibited people from testifying.
"These meetings can build bridges," said Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "But if no one's here, we can't build a bridge. It's got to go both ways."
With or without the police department though, residents were determined to speak out against the police in their communities.
"This is not South Africa," Antonio Rosario, Marjorica's husband and Anthony's father, told the board. He demanded that Gov. George Pataki appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate the officers involved in his son's case because the prosecutor who has been assigned is married to a retired police detective.
Assemblyman Peter Rivera of the South Bronx's 76th district, a former detective, said that he knew "bad cops" who were still working.
"There's abuse, overreaction and outright disregard for the dignity of the individual," said Rivera, who added that only an independent police monitoring commission with subpoena power would be able to discourage police brutality.
Richard Perez of the National Coalition for Puerto Rican Rights warned that the borough could soon "explode" with riots if police-community relations did not improve.
For Marjorica Rosario though, who spent much of the hearing holding her head in her hands and crying each time her dead son's name was mentioned, the hearing seemed to bring back only painful memories. Still, she vowed to keep speaking out against the police.
"I pray to God every day to give me strength," she said.