NYPD cover-up alleged in fatal Brooklyn hit-run
ROCCO PARASCANDOLA
August 27, 2007

It's tough enough surviving the streets of north Brooklyn. It's even tougher when the police break the law, then try to cover it up.That's the argument made by the family of Bobby Roman, a young motorcyclist killed in July 2006 by a hit-and-run driver in Bedford-Stuyvesant. His family says a patrol car struck Roman, then sped off.Two witnesses interviewed by both the family's lawyer and police say much the same thing. The New York Police Department, however, doesn't believe them. It acknowledges two officers were chasing Roman, but there's no mention on the NYPD accident report of the witnesses and what they told investigators.
The police - with the Brooklyn district attorney's office backing them up - say they have a police surveillance videotape to prove a mystery third vehicle fled the scene after a collision with Roman's Kawasaki that was caused when Roman tried to overtake the other vehicle.And while someone familiar with the case, who didn't want to be identified, says the tape is inconclusive, the NYPD could prove once and for all that it has nothing to hide - as well as give the public a look at the car it says struck Roman - by releasing it."What are they hiding?" asks Roman's mother, Anixa Lopez. "I feel it's a cover-up. From day one until now it's been like this. They caused my son's death and we don't have any answers."I don't know how they can live with this," she said.She has, at the very least, a right to be skeptical.The July 9, 2006, accident happened at Fulton Street and Spencer Place, in the 79th Precinct. The two officers chasing Roman, who was speeding down Fulton, were from another precinct, did not put the chase over the air on their police radio and essentially left Roman on the street to die.In the 13 months since then, the NYPD has placed the two officers - still unidentified - on modified duty. It appears to have done little else. Police have never described the mystery third car.Recently, the DA's office finished its probe and punted the case back to the NYPD. A police spokesman said it is still investigating. The DA says the officers cannot be charged with leaving the scene of an accident because they were not involved in the accident.What about charging them for official misconduct for abandoning an accident victim? Or at least presenting the case to a grand jury?"After a thorough and complete investigation, we determined there was no evidence of criminality," says Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for the DA's office.Lopez, Angela Santiago - Roman's fiancee and the mother of his now year-old daughter, Brianna - and their lawyer, Tedd Kessler, say it's clear the DA's office and the NYPD have been dragging their feet on this one and only stepped up the probe when Roman's estate filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in February, blasting the officers for conduct that "was perpetrated with blatant disregard and was in dereliction of duty."Roman was 26 when he was killed. He was a cable company technician and had been looking with Santiago for a place that the couple and their daughter, then just 2 months old, could move into and start their lives together."He was a gentleman," says Santiago, who met Roman when they worked together at a midtown Foot Locker. "Very responsible and a hard-working man."Roman, his family said, enjoyed the freedom of the road and would often hit the streets with his bike. The night before his death he was tooling around Harlem, Santiago remembers. No one seems to know what he was doing in the immediate hours before his death, though it appears he may have been heading to his home in Bushwick when he was killed.Roman was wearing his helmet at the time, but it was of no help when the accident occurred, as the impact sent him flying off his bike and into the side of a building.He died in Bellevue Medical Center later that morning, having never regained consciousness. The witnesses - two women - told police later the patrol car never slowed down. They have since told Kessler that police, in their questioning of the two, seemed to be trying to convince them they must have been mistaken.In another era, the chances of a working-class family successfully taking on the NYPD and the city, even with two witnesses, were pretty slim. But the NYPD has eyes everywhere these days, with hundreds of cameras posted throughout the city.One such camera, No. 61018, is mounted a block away at Fulton Street and Bedford Avenue. It captured the accident and could be the key to the case. At the very least, it is likely to show what the officers did - and did not - do."If there was another car, the opportunity was there to follow that vehicle, or at least to get the license plate," Kessler says. "They didn't do that."They drove off."
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