Following Up

POLICE SHOOTING IS PAST, BUT FAMILY'S PAIN ISN'T

The blaze of headlines has long been extinguished, but the ashes still sear
the hearts of the dead man's family.

In March 2000, Patrick M. Dorismond, 26, was shot and killed in a fight
with undercover police detectives on a Midtown Manhattan street. It erupted
when one of the detectives asked Mr. Dorismond, who was not a drug dealer,
if he had crack for sale, and he reacted angrily, investigators said.

They said one detective's gun went off as he and Mr. Dorismond struggled. A
grand jury found the shooting unintentional and declined to file charges.
But the killing incited public passions, because Mr. Dorismond, an off-duty
private security guard, was the fourth unarmed black man in 13 months to be
die at the hands of the New York City police.

Mr. Dorismond's family was further angered when Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani
suggested that Mr. Dorismond's actions and "pattern of behavior" had
contributed to his death. The mayor authorized release of the dead man's
arrest record, which showed charges including assault and robbery. But
court records revealed that Mr. Dorismond had only been convicted of
disorderly conduct for two of his three arrests, and charges from the
third, when he was 13, were dropped.

Last week, Mr. Dorismond's mother, Marie Dorismond, said, "I'm feeling like
it just happened." She added: "I'm still angry. He's the only son I had."
Her husband, Andre, "thinks about it all the time," she said.

From Port Saint Lucie, Fla., where she now lives, Ms. Dorismond, 54,
continued to speak bitterly of Mr. Giuliani, saying she did not share the
widely held view that he was a hero for his leadership after the Sept. 11
terrorist attack.

"When you do something dirty, there's no way things are going to be clean,"
she said. Mr. Giuliani's spokeswoman, Sunny Mindel, said he declined to
comment.

Two months after the killing, Mr. Giuliani expressed regret at not having
shown more sympathy for the Dorismond family and said he had tried to meet
with them, but would not agree to their condition that their lawyer be
present. The family has since filed a lawsuit against parties that include
Mr. Giuliani and the detective whose gun fired, Anthony Vasquez.

Mr. Vasquez's lawyer, Philip E. Karasyk, said the detective "continues to
be sympathetic toward the family and its loss, and it's something that will
stay with him the rest of his life."

Green Thumbs Up for a Radio Tower

Things are looking up for the radio tower that has made waves.

In 1994, Fordham University began building a new 480-foot tower for its
station, WFUV-FM. But the rising tower on the Bronx campus could be seen
from many places in the New York Botanical Garden, 150 feet away, whose
officials considered it as welcome as a diseased redwood.

They sued, halting the construction at about 250 feet. It remains frozen
there by a 1997 ruling by the Federal Communications Commission staff that
the tower would visually obtrude on the garden. The parties' efforts to
negotiate a settlement long went nowhere.

But now there have been positive turns, both institutions said last week.

"We're working on zeroing in on an alternative site," said Karl Lauby, a
garden spokesman. "We might have a solution in short order." A Fordham
spokeswoman, Elizabeth Schmalz, said new talks, soon to begin between the
college and garden under the federal regulators' auspices, could also bear
fruit.