RI Trooper Shoots Man Thought to Be Reaching for Gun
Ken (NY)
Providence, Rhode Island - 7/28/2001
A 23-year-old man shot in the head by a state trooper during a traffic
stop died at Rhode Island Hospital last night, as state police
defended the shooting.
Trooper John Allen shot Alfredo Torres about midnight Thursday in the
West End. Torres, who was a passenger in a car that had run a red
light, ignored repeated commands to show his hands, the police said.
During the pursuit, a loaded gun was tossed from the car, the state
police said. The state police did not find a gun in the car, but Col.
Edmond S. Culhane Jr. said Allen legitimately feared Torres had
reached for a gun and was turning toward him.
"The trooper followed our protocol and our procedure, and it's up to a
grand jury to determine whether it was justified or not, but I'm
comfortable with what we did," Culhane said.
The state police are still investigating. State prosecutors will
present the case to a grand jury to see whether the use of deadly
force was justified.
The shooting comes amid debate about whether state and local police
single out minorities for traffic stops.
Clergy and community leaders said they did not know whether race
played a role in the shooting of Torres, a dark-skinned Hispanic, by a
white trooper. Yet they said the shooting underscored community
concerns that the police disproportionately pull over minorities.
"To me, it has the smell and all the elements of racial profiling, but
yet we must still wait to see," said the Rev. Marlowe V.N. Washington,
president of the Rhode Island Ministers' Alliance.
Clifford R. Montiero, president of the Providence branch of the NAACP,
said: "This is not going to do anything to improve the relationship
between the police and the community. It's going to make a bigger
spread."
Torres, whose address was given as 65 Belmont Ave., had been in
critical condition on life support at Rhode Island Hospital yesterday.
He was pronounced dead at 8 p.m., said hospital spokeswoman Jane
Bruno.
Shootings by the state police are rare. The last one was in 1994, when
Trooper John Lemont returned fire after being shot. During the last 20
years, only two have proved fatal.
Allen, 34, has an unblemished record during his four years in the
department, and has not fired his gun in the line of duty, the state
police said.
The trooper was on a scheduled day off yesterday. He was scheduled to
be off for two more days, but could ask for more time, the police
said.
At a morning news conference, ranking state police officials gave the
following account of how a simple traffic violation by the driver of a
gray Buick escalated to the point that Allen fired once through a rear
window.
They said the account was based on the statements of Allen and his
partner, Trooper Brian Montminy. They said it was corroborated by the
other three people in the Buick with Torres.
Montminy, 36, has worked 11 years for the state police, and has
received two commendations and an award.
According to this account, the troopers first noticed the Buick while
they were on Route 10 north. They said they began following the car
after it ran a traffic light and stop sign at the top of the Broadway
exit.
The troopers followed the Buick onto Broadway while checking its
license plate on a computer in their cruiser. The check revealed that
the Buick was unregistered, prompting the officers to activate their
overhead lights.
But the Buick would not stop. Instead, it turned from Broadway onto
Knight Street. It traveled at a low speed, and even stopped
momentarily at one point, but then it proceeded again down Knight
Street.
Toward the end of the pursuit, the troopers saw a gun tossed from the
driver's side window.
By using the front bumper on their cruiser, the troopers pushed the
Buick over a curb and onto the sidewalk where Knight Street runs into
Westminster Street. The spot is in front of the John Hope Settlement
House and beside Wiggin Village, a housing project.
Montminy approached the driver's side window of the car. Allen stood
at the rear passenger's side window.
The rear passenger's side window was up, but all the other windows
were down. The side windows at the rear of the car were tinted.
The troopers shouted more than three times for the four people in the
car to show their hands. Everyone complied except Torres, who was in
the front passenger seat.
Torres bent down as if he were reaching for the floor. When he rose up
and began turning around toward Allen, the trooper fired one shot. He
fired his department-issued gun, a .40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.
The shot traveled through the rear window and hit Torres in the back
of the head.
The troopers detained the car's three other occupants. Montminy
retrieved the gun tossed out the car window -- a .22-caliber Smith &
Wesson semiautomatic.
Immediately, Allen called for a rescue and tried to resuscitate
Torres.
Later, Culhane and Maj. Steven M. Pare visited Rhode Island Hospital.
Culhane said he wrapped an arm around Torres's mother and told her,
through an interpreter, that he was sorry.
"I do care," Culhane said.
But the colonel emphasized that the race of Torres and the other
passengers was not a factor.
"They were stopped because they ran a traffic-control device," he
said. "It had nothing to do with the race and the ethnicity of the
occupants, and it had everything to do with the way the vehicle was
driven."
Monique Williams, of Direct Action for Rights and Equality, a
community group in Providence, said she could not know whether race
played a role. But she said the shooting only exacerbates the fear
minorities have of being stopped by police.
"People of color are afraid if a cop stops them," she said. "Next
thing you know they're being busted upside the head and lying in a
puddle of blood."
Montiero, of the NAACP, said such fears showed the need for state and
local police to hire more minority officers.
Earlier this year, a statewide commission assembled after the shooting
death of Providence police Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. recommended the
hiring of more minority officers. It also suggested appointing a
special prosecutor and team of outside investigators to examine police
shootings.
None of the clergy and community leaders contacted yesterday mentioned
such an investigation. They said they did not have any immediate plans
to protest Torres's shooting.
According to court files, Torres, who was born in Puerto Rico, has a
long criminal record of breaking and entering, drug possession and
possession of a stolen motor vehicle in Rhode Island. At the state
Training School in 1996, he punched a fellow resident into
unconsciousness during a fight over a cap.
A man who answered the door at the house where the Torres family
lived, who identified himself only as Torres's younger brother, said
Torres did not live there. "He's a cute kid. He got shot in the head,
and that's all I'm going to say," the man said.
After the shooting, the state police released one passenger in the
car, whom they refused to identify.
They arrested a 13-year-old girl from Providence, who was a passenger,
on a charge of possession of cocaine with intent to deliver. The state
police said she had crack cocaine packaged for sale.
Troopers also arrested the driver of the car, Jerry Cintron, 19, of
156 Cleveland St. He was charged in District Court with possession of
a firearm without a license, operating a vehicle on a suspended
license and eluding the police. He was also presented as a probation
violator in Superior Court. He is being held at the Adult Correctional
Institutions.
According to court files, Cintron has a history of trying to drive
away from the police. In 1998, he tried to back away before Central
Falls police caught him driving a stolen car. Last summer, he drove
off after Providence police watched him selling drugs.
The police caught him after he drove through a stop sign and ran a red
traffic light.
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL
Ken (NY)
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