New York attorney general Letitia James will not be charging four police officers from the 101st Precinct in Far Rockaway in the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Geoffrey Parris at the Ocean Bay apartments on Feb. 12, 2024.
Following a thorough probe, her Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which included a review of footage from body-worn cameras, audio from a 911 call, interviews with involved officers, and a comprehensive legal analysis, concluded that a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that the officer’s actions were justified under New York law.
According to the OSI report, on the morning of the fatal shootings, the four NYPD officers — Christopher Ponce, James Wynne, Tyliek Jerry and Shadasia Jones — responded to a 911 call reporting gunshots in a fourth-floor apartment at 409 Beach 51st St. at around 10:54 a.m. When the cops knocked on the door, Parris’ brother opened the door for them, and while two of them talked with the brother, who admitted that he was the one who called 911, two other cops went to check on Parris, who was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. After speaking with Parris, officers told his brother they were going to leave and write up the matter as a domestic incident.
The brother then told the officers that Parris had a black gun and had pointed it at his face. As captured on his body-worn camera, when Ponce asked Mr. Parris’s brother what had happened, he said he needed “to go break his [expletive] face, nothing happened, he is in there bugging the [expletive] out, [he is] my brother.”
Ponce, Wynne, and Jerry walked back to Parris’s bedroom to talk to him again, the door was closed. Ponce knocked on the door, told Parris to open it, and said they had to talk. Parris opened the door, and Wynne tried to grab him. Parris ran to the back of the room, where he picked up what looked to be a black gun and pointed it at him. The audio of his BWC captured Ponce saying, “Drop it.” Ponce then fired his gun, striking Parris in the stomach. EMS rushed Parris to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead a short while later. Officers recovered a BB gun in Parris’s bedroom.
Under New York’s justification law, a police officer may use deadly physical force when the officer reasonably believes it is necessary to defend against the use of deadly physical force by another. In this case, officers were responding to a 911 call reporting gunshots, and when they arrived at the apartment, they were told that Parris had a gun and had pointed it at his brother’s face. As officers attempted to engage with Parris a second time, he picked up what appeared to be a gun and failed to comply with orders to drop it.
Under the circumstances, given the law and evidence, a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that the officer’s use of deadly physical force against Parris was justified, and therefore, OSI determined that criminal charges would not be pursued in the matter.
All four police officers are still assigned to the 101st Precinct in Far Rockaway.
