Newsgroups: alt.drugs
From: [catalyst remailer] at [netcom.com]
Subject: First casualty in new "Drug Sweeps".
Date: Mon, 9 May 1994 21:44:29 -0700

I love the smell of riots. Not yet really in the wind, but it's a
rollin' o'er them hills, oh yes I can feel it in the air. Buzzzzz.

        NEW YORK (AP) -- A drug suspect who died in police custody was
killed while handcuffed and prone on the ground, the medical
examiner said Monday in ruling the case a homicide.
        Ernest Sayon, 22, died April 29 during a confrontation with
police conducting drug sweeps in the borough of Staten Island.
        Some neighbors and Sayon's family claimed he was beaten to
death. Protests were staged outside the police precinct and City
Hall.
        Sayon died as the result of ``asphyxia by compression of the
chest and neck while rear-handcuffed and prone on the ground,''
Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch said.
        He cautioned that the finding neither implies guilt nor
determines whether a homicide is justifiable.
        District Attorney William Murphy said Monday he will present the
case to a grand jury beginning May 23.
        The officers ``haven't done anything wrong that I could
determine at this junction,'' Police Commissioner William Bratton
said.
        Police say Sayon fled when officers tried to question a group of
men. Officer Donald Brown caught him after a brief struggle, and he
was taken to a hospital, where he died, police said. Both Sayon and
Brown are black.
        ``Now everyone knows that they killed my child,'' Sayon's
mother, Masita Sayon, said Monday. ``I want justice. I want it
now.''
        Brown and two other officers -- Sgt. John Mahoney and Officer
Greg Gerson -- are on desk duty pending the outcome of
investigations by the district attorney and internal affairs. It
wasn't clear how the other officers were involved. Police officials
have refused to comment on specifics.
        Brown has not returned messages left for him at the precinct.
        Bratton said the department has withdrawn its anti-drug unit
from the Park Hill complex, a low-income, largely minority, housing
project that is plagued by crime. He said police will continue to
fight the drug trade by ``utilizing all the other forces I have at
hand.''