OFFICER IS CLEARED IN DEATH OF A SUSPECTED DRUG DEALER

A Manhattan grand jury has declined to indict a police officer in the

death of a suspected drug dealer who was hit in the head by a police radio
thrown by the officer during a chase, the Manhattan District Attorney's
office announced Thursday.

The suspect, Kenneth Banks, 36, suffered a fractured skull and lapsed into a
coma after he was hit by the radio and fell from his bicycle during the
altercation in Harlem last Oct. 29. Banks died 12 days later.

The officer, Craig Yokemick, and his partner, had begun to chase Banks after
they saw him hand several vials that appeared to contain cocaine to another
person on the street, according to the police. Prosecutors said that Officer
Yokemick threw his police radio at Banks when it seemed Banks would get
away.

The police said the officers found Banks carrying one vial of crack cocaine
and a box cutter after he was injured.

James M. Kindler, Chief Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, said the
grand jury "found the officer was justified in the force he used in his
effort to apprehend Banks."

He added that "neither tackling him nor the use of the radio is the sort of
force that you would think would result in death; this is just an
unfortunate chain of circumstances."

Police Commissioner Howard Safir talked little about the grand jury's
decision yesterday, saying only that "the criminal justice system has
spoken." But he said the department would begin its own inquiry into the
incident to see whether Officer Yokemick violated any administrative policy
when he tried to arrest Banks.

Citing the continuing investigation, Officer Yokemick's lawyer, John Tynan,
said that he could not comment.

Officer Yokemick remains on modified desk duty, stripped of his badge and
gun.

Banks's family called the grand jury's decision "a devastating shock" and
disputed some elements of the case as presented by the District Attorney's
office. The family's lawyer, Jonathan S. Abady, said that he would soon file
a civil complaint in Federal court charging Officer Yokemick with violating
Banks's civil rights and would also get in touch with Federal prosecutors in
the hope that they might investigate the killing.

The Chief Medical Examiner had ruled Banks's death a homicide, saying it was
the result of blunt trauma to the head caused by the police radio. But that
conclusion was disputed by the neurosurgeon who treated Banks at
Metropolitan Hospital Center and by the chiefs of neurosurgery at New York
Hospital and Harlem Hospital Center, all of whom said Banks's fatal injuries
were the result of the fall from his bike to the concrete, according to the
District Attorney's office.

While prosecutors said that the distinction would have had little effect on
the case's outcome, the family said that it remained convinced that Officer
Yokemick's radio killed Banks.

"You look for better when you come to a cop, you look for protection, not
for someone who's a destroyer," Banks's mother, Maybell Banks, said by
telephone from her home in Hertford, N.C. "What's happened here is sick and
no kind of justice."