CONTRITION NOT ENOUGH FOR COPS' FATAL MISTAKE

The most remarkable thing about Alberta Spruill's death may be that so few
people outside of New York have heard anything about what happened to her.

The 57-year-old woman was literally scared to death last month - by cops.

She died shortly after police in the Big Apple smashed in her apartment
door and threw a concussion grenade inside the Harlem residence, which they
mistakenly thought was a hiding place for illegal drugs and guns. Two hours
later, Spruill was dead of a heart attack.

New York's medical examiner ruled her death a homicide - meaning it was
caused by the actions of others, in this case the cops.

To say the officers blew it when they went into Spruill's apartment like
storm troopers is an understatement. To say heads should roll ought to be
uncontested by everyone with an IQ over 10.

So far, a few cops have been reassigned, but that's more penance than
punishment. Somebody needs to be fired. Somebody should be the focus of a
criminal investigation. When cops cut corners and a take a life in the
process, it's not enough to say they made a mistake and move on.

In Spruill's case, the police cut a lot of corners.

They decided to raid her apartment after an informant, someone who had
given them bad information in the past, said a drug dealer was using it to
store his stash of guns and narcotics. Instead of putting the place under
surveillance to confirm the snitch's charge, cops launched the fatal raid.
Rather than conduct a "buy and bust" sting operation to ensure they had the
right apartment, police battered down Spruill's door on the questionable
word of an informant.

Instead of determining who was inside the apartment before they went in,
the officers decided to use a stun grenade to scare the hell out of whoever
was there. As it turned out, they scared the life out of Spruill, a
longtime city employee with a bad heart.

To their credit, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner
Raymond Kelly quickly admitted the cops made a mistake and promised to
investigate what went wrong. That's a refreshing change from the way
Rudolph Giuliani ducked and dodged any hint of blaming cops for the deaths
of several unarmed black men who were killed by police while he was mayor.

In one instance, an undercover cop shot a 27-year-old black man standing
outside a Manhattan bar after he became angry when the officer asked him
where he could buy some marijuana. The two scuffled, and the plainclothes
cop shot and killed Patrick Dorismond.

Instead of questioning the cop's tactics, Giuliani tried to smear his
innocent victim by releasing Dorismond's court-sealed juvenile record.
Giuliani, whom the media later crowned "America's Mayor" for his response
to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, said Dorismond had contributed to
his death by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

During a May 2000 appearance on MSNBC several months later, after a close
call with his own mortality (he was found to have prostate cancer),
Giuliani said he felt regret over the way he had handled the Dorismond case.

Bloomberg didn't need a brush with death to be compassionate. He spoke at
Spruill's funeral and then went to other black gatherings in Harlem to
express his sorrow over the deadly results of the police department's
botched drug raid.

It was important for the mayor to acknowledge that mistakes were made by
the cops who busted into Spruill's apartment, but expressions of contrition
are cheap - and meaningless - if they aren't backed up by meaningful action.

The worldwide praise that New York cops received for their heroic efforts
on the day of the terrorist attacks is well deserved. But so too is the
call by many blacks in the nation's largest city for someone to pay for the
death of Alberta Spruill.

DeWayne Wickham writes for Gannett News Service. E-mail him at
DeWayneWickham@aol.com.