they’re willing to use court resources
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BY JASON COHEN
While the city recently released
footage from police
body cameras in the fatal
shooting of Kawaski Trawick,
it still has yet to make the full
unedited footage public.
Marinda van Dalen, senior
staff attorney in the disability
justice program at New
York Lawyers for the Public
Interest is leading several
Freedom of Information Law
(FOIL) lawsuits against the
NYPD to demand the unedited
footage of police responses to
people in mental health crises,
including one for the Trawick
case. She is also an expert
on alternative models to
police intervention.
Van Dalen told the Bronx
Times she is quite upset with
how the city has handled
this investigation.
“The body worn camera
program was instituted to
trace transparency and accountability,
not to assist in
law enforcement,” van Dalen
said. “The response that we’ve
seen by the NYPD is that
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in an effort to prevent
footage from being released.”
According to the offi cial report,
32-year-old Kawaski Trawick
was locked out of his Hill
House apartment on April 14,
2019. FDNY personnel let Trawick
back into his home and
he had already started cooking
when NYPD Offi cers Brendan
Thompson and Herbert
Davis arrived at Hill House.
The report said that Trawick
asked the offi cers multiple
times why they were in
his home and he explained to
them that he was “just cooking.”
Thompson and Davis
allegedly refused to answer
Trawick’s questions, yelled
orders at him and tased and
killed him within minutes of
their arrival.
Van Dalen, who has been a
lawyer for 27 years, stressed
that the city must release all
the footage and added that
Trawick could be alive if police
were properly trained and
were accompanied by a mental
health professional.
“It was troubling to watch
the footage and see what happened,”
she said.
According to van Dalen,
the city does not feel the need
to release the unedited footage
because it is an ongoing investigation.
She added that “the
city is just throwing everything
against the wall to see
what will stick.”
“We believe the footage, if
released, will show the gross
inadequacy of the police response,”
she stressed.
Van Dalen noted it’s quite
alarming that even when
cops arrive on the scene of an
emotionally disturbed person
(EDP) such as Trawick or
Walter Wallace, they end up
killing them.
She said that it should have
been a sign for police to be
sensitive to Trawick’s mental
health issues since he live in
supportive housing. Additionally,
when the cops entered the
apartment, Trawick was cooking
and posed no threat.
“Our goal is to try and
bring about real reform in
how we respond as a society
to someone who is experiencing
a mental health crisis,”
she said. “It’s sad to see our
public institutions seem to be
more concerned with protecting
themselves and obscuring
what happened.”
Marinda van Dalen, senior staff attorney in the disability justice program
at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, speaks about the
Kawaski Trawick case. Courtesy of Marinda van Dalen
Legal expert discusses
need to release unedited
Trawick footage