FATAL ATTACK AFTER MISTAKEN RAID IS RULED A HOMICIDE

The city medical examiner has ruled that a 57-year-old Harlem woman who had
a heart attack after the police mistakenly raided her apartment, threw a
concussion grenade inside and handcuffed her, died from the stress and fear
of the raid, officials said yesterday.

At the same time, the Police Department announced it was developing a new
system to track information on such raids.

The office of Chief Medical Examiner Charles S. Hirsch formally concluded
that the death of the woman, Alberta Spruill, a 29-year city employee, was a
homicide, citing the unusual circumstance of "sudden death following police
raid," said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the office.

The homicide ruling means Ms. Spruill's death was caused by the hand of
another, as opposed to a death by natural causes or a suicide, but it
neither places blame nor ascribes civil liability to the police.

In setting out the cause of death, the medical examiner's office also cited
the "flash grenade detonation and handcuffing" and Ms. Spruill's
"hypertensive heart disease," Ms. Borakove said. One official added that her
death had been caused by "the stress of the raid - the stress and the fear
that she experienced."

Ms. Spruill died less than two hours after the 6:10 a.m. raid on May 16. She
was in her apartment at 310 West 143rd Street, dressed for her morning trip
to her city job handling lists of Civil Service candidates.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly
apologized for her death that afternoon, acknowledging the department's
role. Mr. Bloomberg spoke at Ms. Spruill's funeral, taking responsibility
personally and on behalf of the city for her death, and saying, "At least in
this case, existing practices failed." Both men have said the department
will conduct a full investigation into the episode and review the
department's use of the concussion grenades and its procedures for obtaining
and executing search warrants.

Mr. Kelly reassigned to desk duty the lieutenant who had decided to use the
grenade and later transferred the precinct commander whose officers had
handled the raid, saying he had not adequately supervised them. Last Friday,
a week later, he said the moratorium on using grenades had been lifted and
he had begun exploring the possibility of finding safer alternatives.

The raid was based on erroneous information from a confidential informer who
told the police that drugs and guns were stored in the apartment, where Ms.
Spruill, a churchgoing woman whom Mr. Bloomberg later described as a model
city employee, had lived for decades.

The raid raised a number of questions about whether the police had done
adequate surveillance on the apartment and taken other necessary steps
before executing the search warrant. In fact, the man who the informer said
was storing guns and drugs in the apartment had been arrested several days
before the warrant was executed. Mr. Kelly has said all these issues will be
examined in the department's investigation.

Ms. Spruill's relatives have said they plan to sue the city, a lawyer for
the family has said.

Yesterday morning, responding to reporters' questions about the case, and
the police shooting of Ousmane Zongo, 35, an unarmed African immigrant who
was shot and killed by the police last Thursday, Mr. Kelly said he hoped the
investigation of Ms. Spruill's death would be completed soon.

Later in the afternoon, in a news release, the department announced the
creation of the system to track and store information on search warrants
executed by the police. The creation of the database, which was first
suggested in January by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, underscores the
fact that the department in the past has kept no central repository of such
information, including whether the warrants resulted in the recovery of
contraband.

The new Search Warrant Database will compile a variety of information for
each warrant that is sought, including the names of the supervising officer,
the judge who issued the warrant, the prosecutor assigned to the case, the
location, building plans and possible hazards, and the results of the
warrant, according to the release.

The review board chairman, Hector Gonzalez, said in the release that the
board, based on cases it had reviewed, approached the department earlier
this year to recommend a central database to track search warrant
executions. "We are excited that the department agreed with our
recommendations and is implementing it so quickly," he said.

A January memo from the board's executive director, Florence L. Finkle, said
that executing search warrants is "essential to good policing," but at the
same time, "can be a traumatic experience" for those people inside the home
or business entered and searched. "It is therefore important that police
executives evaluate on an ongoing basis department policies regarding such
warrants and those units that frequently obtain and execute such warrants."

Ms. Finkle wrote that information that a particular unit obtained and
executed a large number of search warrants that did not result in contraband
or other evidence being seized, or executed a number of warrants at wrong
addresses, might indicate problems that senior police officials should
address.

Board statistics show that the number of "abuse of authority" allegations
that the agency recorded under the category of "premises entered or
searched" rose substantially between 1998 and 2002. There were 768 in 2002,
or 12.7 percent of all the "abuse of authority" allegations made to the
board that year, up from 466, or 8.7 percent of those made in 1998. The
category includes not only the execution of search warrants but other
instances in which people complain that the police wrongfully entered a home
or business. A small fraction of those complaints were substantiated.

Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties
Union, called the collection and analysis of the search warrant information
appropriate, but said, "there is a lot more to be done in order to ensure
that situations like this never happen again." She called for a thorough
investigation by the Police Department and the review board into the use of
concussion grenades and no-knock warrants, and the reliance on confidential
informers, who she said are often unreliable.

Yesterday evening, many of Ms. Spruill's friends and neighbors, along with
community activists, attended a rally outside her building, and about 150
people, escorted by police officers on scooters, marched in orderly rows
about six across to the Convent Avenue Baptist Church on West 145th Street,
where she had worshiped. They carried a mock wooden coffin. Several speakers
addressed the group, including Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer, and
City Councilman Robert Jackson.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has called for an independent investigation of Ms.
Spruill's death, spoke outside the church, and said later in an interview
that the medical examiner's finding "removes any doubt as to why she is
dead."

"Now, the question is whether or not it will reach the bar of being criminal
and if it is criminal, who will be prosecuted," Mr. Sharpton said.

Gail Donoghue, a special city assistant corporation counsel, issued an
unusual statement on the case yesterday, saying that although the medical
examiner had found that Ms. Spruill had died from the stress caused by the
raid and that her death was a homicide, "the medical examiner was not making
any judgment that the police acted improperly, or that their conduct was
unlawful or inappropriate." She said police conduct in the death was under
review by the Police Department.

Yesterday, a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan accused
the department of another mistaken raid. The suit said officers broke
through an apartment door in the Jefferson Houses in East Harlem about 6
a.m. on April 2, and used what was believed to be a flash grenade. The
officers entered with guns drawn and ransacked the apartment, breaking a
television set and a fish tank, the suit said.

The officers said they were looking for drugs, but later acknowledged making
a mistake, the suit said. The two people in the apartment, Cynthia Lewis
Chapman and her teenage son, were taken into custody and later released
without charges. Their lawyer, James I. Meyerson, said that an earlier
shoulder injury of Ms. Chapman's was aggravated in the incident and that
both she and her son were suffering lingering emotional distress. The Police
Department and the city's law department declined to comment on the case.