N.Y. Mayor de Blasio warns against rush to judgment in black teen’s death

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio emphasized on Friday the importance of waiting until more facts are known before jumping to conclusions about the recent death of a local black teenager.

The New York Police Department is investigating the May 27 death of 16-year-old Dayshen McKenzie on Staten Island as a possible hate crime. According to early reports, notably in the Daily News, he collapsed and died from an asthma attack after being chased by a mostly white group who were said to be shouting racial slurs and waving a gun.

On Friday morning, de Blasio told WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” that the incident was distressingly similar to the highly publicized 1986 death of Michael Griffith in Howard Beach. The mayor said the NYPD handles bias crimes seriously, but warned against rushing to judgment before the details are known.

“I don’t know enough and the police don’t know enough yet, and I want to be very clear about that,” de Blasio said, according to the Staten Island Advance. “We cannot rush to judgment on this one, we need to know more.”

He urged for cooler heads to prevail while the police do their jobs.

“We just don’t know enough yet to determine what happened here,” he told Lehrer. “And I think it’s important that people take a breath while the PD has a chance to really investigate and get right the facts of this case.”

Earlier in the day Friday, the Daily News reported on the alleged racial motivation behind McKenzie’s death. A witness, former NYPD officer Diane Fatigati, told the paper that what she saw leading up to the teen’s death made her consider the incident a homicide.

“To me, it’s murder,” Fatigati told the Daily News. “They were chasing him — that’s a crime. You’re hunting them because they’re black. … You’re calling them a n*****.”

Fatigati reportedly rushed to McKenzie’s side and tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

The liberal de Blasio has had a mixed relationship with New York’s law enforcement community. His two predecessors, Michael Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani, were both law-and-order stalwarts who embraced controversial police tactics like stop and frisks.

De Blasio sparked severe backlash in December 2014 by saying he taught his biracial son to be especially careful when dealing with police. In a silent protest, dozens of NYPD officers turned their backs on de Blasio at an officer’s funeral the following month.

But while de Blasio warned against rushing to judgment, the Rev. Al Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network (NAN), released a statement on Friday calling for the federal government to get involved. Sharpton cited the 2014 death of Eric Garner, a black Staten Islander who died after an NYPD officer apparently placed him in a chokehold, as a reason why the local district attorney’s office should be viewed with skepticism. (The district attorney at the time, Dan Donovan, has since been elected to Congress.)

“On Saturday, during NAN’s live action rally and radio broadcast,” Sharpton’s statement reads in part, “we will call on the federal government to investigate this incident as a possible hate crime because after the Staten Island District Attorney’s office (under the former prosecutor) showed questionable investigative skills in the Eric Garner case, we cannot in confidence rely on the DA’s office to pursue this matter to the degree the community feels will bring justice to the family of Dayshen McKenzie.”