“New York City agreed Friday to pay $3.9 million to the family of a black Bronx teenager shot to death by a white police officer in 2012. The deal settled a federal lawsuit brought by the family of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham. ‘This was a tragic case,’ said New York Law Department spokesman Nicholas Paolucci.” — CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/city-to-pay-3-9m-in-2012-nypd-shooting-of-bronx-teen-ramarley-graham/
This was one of those gray-area cases where the victim was engaged in illegal activity — marijuana possession — and fled from police; but shouldn’t have been killed for that, and died as a result of paranoid cops overreacting to fear he might have a gun. He didn’t. Graham was confronted by cops on the street, but fled to home, where he was cornered and then killed in a bathroom.
A grand jury indicted the cop who shot him, but a judge threw out the indictment as flawed, and a second grand jury declined to indict. Federal prosecutors are still investigating the case.
A ProPublica study last year concluded that 15 – 19 year old black males are 21 times as likely to be killed by police as white males in the same age group.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/10/black-kids-21x-more-likely-to-be-killed-by-cops.html