Police unions group backs New Rochelle cops' side of events in Jarrell Garris' death

A coalition of Hudson Valley police unions insists the killing of Jarrell Garris was justified, supporting the New Rochelle Police Department’s account that Garris was shot July 3 after trying to take an officer’s gun.

Garris, 37, was shot by New Rochelle Det. Steven Conn after allegedly stealing fruit from a local store before getting into a scuffle with responding officers and reaching for one of their holstered firearms.

Garris, a Black man and New Rochelle native, died Monday after spending a week in a coma, leading to an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office and outcry from the community over what many saw as an unnecessary use of force.

All three officers involved have been placed on administrative leave pending the investigation’s findings.

Police: Body cam footage shows Garris grabbing for gun. But does it?

In a statement late Wednesday, the Affiliated Police Associations of Westchester asserted that body-worn camera footage “conclusively” showed Garris “intentionally” placed “both hands” on an officer’s gun and “repeatedly” attempted to remove it from the holster.

“Faced with a split-second life and death decision, and aware that Garris could have full control of the officer’s handgun in a heartbeat, Det. Conn justifiably fired one round at Garris, stopping the threat and saving the lives of the officers present,” Det. Keith Olson, president for the Yonkers Police Benevolent Association, wrote in the statement.

Further, Olson praises the department’s release of the footage, saying it gives the public “a true understanding of what happened.”

While bodycam footage and screenshots released to reporters in the aftermath of the shooting shows Garris' hands on something attached to an officer during the scuffle, it's not clear whether it is a gun. In the background, Conn can be heard shouting, “He’s got a gun.”

The footage is cut off before the shooting itself — the New Rochelle Police Department has said they haven’t released the rest of the footage out of respect for the family.

In an interview Thursday, Olson acknowledged he had not seen video beyond what has been released, but said his understanding was that Conn fired at Garris within a few seconds of shouting “He’s got a gun.”

The Journal News/lohud, part of the USA Today Network, filed a Freedom of Information Law request for the footage in its entirety.

“It’s clear to me both hands are on the gun and he’s trying to pull it out of the holster,” Olson said, noting that over the years, holsters have been improved to make it more difficult to remove the firearm.

“They’re tricky to get out and cops are aware of that, but they’re not impossible to get out,” Olson continued. “So when somebody’s trying to rip somebody’s gun out of the holster, it’s a pretty dire situation. Just seconds — that’s all it takes. These things don’t last that long. You go from simple arrest to complete mayhem in seconds.”

Garris’ family’s attorney, William O. Wagstaff, ripped Olson’s statement as “distressing” and focused on blaming the victim.

“Another unarmed Black man was killed by police, and yet another defensive, insensitive, and irresponsible response from a police association,” Wagstaff said in a statement released Thursday.

How did Garris' legal, mental health history affect police response?

The statement goes on to point to multiple alleged run-ins Garris had with local police in recent years. While some of his criminal history is backed up by court records, The Journal News/lohud could not independently verify on Thursday some of the allegations included in Olson's statement, which was distributed to over a dozen media outlets in the Hudson Valley and the New York City metropolitan area.

The Journal News/lohud has filed Freedom of Information requests for police reports related to several of these alleged incidents.

‘You do not respect our Black lives:’ New Rochelle residents enraged over police shooting of Jarrell Garris

Garris' family has said in past statements that Garris struggled with mental health issues, including schizophrenia, and that New Rochelle police had contacted him when he was a city resident for wellness checks.

“Jarrell Garris had a long and troubled history of mental health and legal issues," Olson said in his statement, adding that it is unclear whether the three responding officers knew of Garris’ history at the time of the arrest and shooting.

That brings into question the threshold of information New Rochelle officers are required to have before engaging with a potential suspect, and the training they receive on interacting with someone with mental health issues, known or unknown.

New Rochelle operates a Mobile Crisis Response team, founded last summer and staffed by mental health professionals “who will respond along with, and in some cases in lieu of police officers to calls of people in mental crisis,” according to the city’s website. This team was not called to assist with Garris’ July 3 arrest, New Rochelle Police said.

Wagstaff suggested the discussion should be focused on Conn’s background and disciplinary history. Court records show Conn was sued for an alleged 2015 assault against a bus driver (before Conn was a sworn police officer) and the shooting of a New Rochelle dog in 2018.

The exposure of Garris’ criminal record and personal history is “legally irrelevant” to the question of whether his killing was justified, Wagstaff said in his statement. “It amounts to “the classic, ‘But he was a criminal’ routine, which suggests that someone’s past makes their extra-judicial killing acceptable; it does not.”

Olson agreed that the criminal history did not bear on the shooting itself but on the issue of why Garris might have resisted and reached for the gun, and was not "a judgement on the soul of Jarrell Garris."

And getting into Garris’ criminal history is a necessary part of transparency to the public, Olson argued.

“The entire picture is part of the picture,” he said. “We live in this world where everyone wants transparency yet they don’t want all the transparency.”

Eduardo Cuevas contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Police unions group backs New Rochelle cops in Jarrell Garris death