Tamon Robinson was in coma after struck by cop vehicle

TAMON ROBINSON tried to outrun cops, but couldn’t.

The 27-year-old coffee barista died in April after being struck by an NYPD squad car that began chasing him as he swiped paver stones in the predawn light at his Brooklyn housing project.

Now his mom’s being chased anew, hounded by a collection agency hired by the city with a cruel final demand, the Daily News has learned.

The city has ordered her to pay the $710 cost of repairing the police car that killed her boy.

“We’re still grieving, and this is like a slap in the face,” Robinson’s mom, Laverne Dobbinson, 45, told The News.

“They want my son to pay for damage to the vehicle that killed him. It’s crazy.”

The blood-money letter dated Sept. 27 and mailed to her son seeks $710 for “property damage to a vehicle owned by the New York Police Department.”

It also threatens to slap the family with a lawsuit if the claim isn’t paid.

“Isn’t there respect for the dead?” asked John Torrence, 50, the victim’s uncle.

Police said Robinson was fleeing after being caught red-handed stealing the decorative stones from the grounds of the Bayview Houses in Canarsie on April 12.

He ran toward his building on E. 102nd St., but he was struck by the vehicle driven by Officer Volkan Uretener.

Robinson slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness, dying six days later of blunt impact head injuries.

The city medical examiner ruled his death an accident.

A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said Thursday that the incident remains under investigation. The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau was also probing allegations from witnesses that Robinson was deliberately mowed down.

Photos taken of the squad car show a large indentation on the front, left-hand side of the vehicle.

Dobbinson’s lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, has filed a notice of intent to sue the city, and he’s warned the NYPD not to do any repairs. Any modifications to the car would be a violation of a court order to preserve it as evidence in the pending criminal investigation.

Rubenstein called the $710 bill a “disgrace.”

“In my 40 years of practicing law in this city I have never seen anything as heartless as this,” he said.

Read More

Friday was moving day for Pat Brunson-Ware after almost 21 years holding vigil and hoping against all odds that her son, Bert, would suddenly awake from a coma.

Brunson-Ware removed Teddy bears, photographs and a framed print with the message “Today Is A New Day” from shelves in her son’s room. Bert would have been 43 on Aug. 16, but just after 9 p.m. Thursday, his mother said, “The Lord spoke to him, and he just left me.”

Bert had been gravely ill since July 15, fighting an infection and having difficulty breathing. When he opened his eyes Thursday, it was the first time in a week. “He looked like had done a turnaround,” his mother said. But it was more like his last look at a world just beyond his reach since 1991.

An attorney told Pat Brunson-Ware early on that her son’s condition was a “fate worse than death.”

Bert Brunson was 22 in 1991 and had earned football and track trophies at Hamilton High School. He was working as a skycap at Memphis International Airport when he was stopped on suspicion of driving under the influence by Shelby County Sheriff’s deputies.

Two deputies said they stopped to let Brunson use the rest room at a service station. There the officers said Brunson tried to grab one of their guns and escape. Two other deputies soon arrived. Brunson was struck in the head with nightsticks, hog-tied and placed on his stomach in the back seat of a cruiser.

Face down on the seat, his oxygen supply was cut off, leaving him in what his mother called a persistent vegetative state. Brunson’s stepfather, Lionel Ware, said doctors told them there was little chance his son would ever emerge from the coma. “A neurologist told us if he didn’t wake up in four years he never would.”

Bert’s mother, a U.S. Postal Service trainer, sued, accusing the officers of using unnecessary and unconstitutional force. The officers remained on duty with pay, but the county agreed before trial to settle the federal lawsuit, paying Brunson-Ware $3.5 million and agreeing to pay the cost of her son’s nursing-home care for the rest of his life. It was the biggest payout from a law enforcement agency at the time and came with assurances that hog-tying was never to be used again by law enforcement officers in Shelby County.

Lionel Ware said each deputy involved in the case has faced tragedy since 1991. One was caught stealing parts from a warehouse and lost his pension. One kicked in the door of a suspect and was shot multiple times in the face. The son of one deputy was killed in a car accident. And one, Chris Jones, was convicted of second-degree murder for the 2008 shooting of a karaoke bar deejay and is serving a 23-year prison sentence.

Brunson-Ware estimated that her son’s frequent visits to hospital emergency rooms, nursing care, a nursing home and other miscellaneous expenses for more than 20 years probably would add up to more than $10 million.

“It served the purpose God intended,” she said of her son’s the long ordeal. “God made him and decided when he would leave. He blessed a lot of people the way he fought his good fight.”

For her, the vigil has not ended. Her mother, who has Alzheimer’s, was hospitalized last year with kidney failure requiring dialysis. She occupies a room at Americare Health and Rehabilitation Center, four doors from Bert Brunson’s room.

Services for Bert Brunson will be at noon Aug. 12 at Christ Missionary Baptist Church on South Parkway, with burial in Elmwood Cemetery.

For Brunson-Ware, closure is a distant possibility, she said. “I cry fresh tears every day.”

According to Florida Trooper Dan Cole, the Taser strike against handcuffed Danielle Maudsley that left her brain-dead was justified because “she was already outrunning me.” A dashcam video of the September 19 incident documents that at the time Cole used the Taser, the fleeing woman — who, as Cole said, was roughly one-third his weight — was, at most, a couple of feet away. During the official inquiry, Cole likewise admitted that he did not issue a verbal warning about the Taser strike because of the “short time” in which the incident occurred and the urgent need to “stop her.”

The attack caused Maudsley, who had been arrested after allegedly leaving the scene of two traffic accidents, to fall backwards and hit her head on the concrete sidewalk. The 19-year-old immediately lost consciousness and lapsed into what appears to be an irreversible coma. Cole claimed that using the Taser was appropriate because of concerns that the woman, who was running in the direction of a highway, might be hit by a car — something that could have been prevented had the officer been willing to exert himself just a little bit.

“Tell me that’s not excessive force,” protested Cheryl Maudsley, the victim’s mother. “I’m not saying she was an angel, but she didn’t deserve that. He couldn’t reach out and grab her? He was an arm’s length away.”

Going “hands-on,” however, posed unacceptable risks, Cole protested during the inquiry.

“I [couldn’t] just jump on her,” Cole maintained. “I’m three times her weight. If we go down, one or both of us is going to get hurt. The Taser is the intermediate weapon of choice.”

Although routinely described as a “non-lethal” alternative to firearms, the Taser is regarded as a deadly weapon when it is seized by a criminal suspect and used against a police officer. Assuming that it is properly described as an “intermediate” option in the use-of-force continuum, Cole’s decision to employ it against a tiny, handcuffed, non-violent misdemeanor suspect is an unmistakable violation of the guidelines contained in the Florida Highway Patrol’s policy manual. Use of a Taser (referred to as an Electronic Control Device, or ECD) by a trooper, the manual states, is appropriate only in dealing with a suspect who “(a) Has the apparent ability to physically threaten the [officer] or others; or, (b) Is preparing or attempting to flee or escape. (NOTE: Fleeing cannot be the sole reason for deployment of the ECD).” (Emphasis in the original.)

The manual also dictates that “Unless exigent circumstances exist, members shall not use the device in the following situations: (a) In a punitive or coercive manner;
(b) On a handcuffed or secured prisoner” (emphasis in the original). While Maudsley was not “secured,” she was handcuffed. Cole’s laziness or lack of conditioning did not constitute an “exigent” circumstance.

In retrospect, despite the consequences to a non-violent offender who posed no threat to anybody, Cole defiantly said that he would do exactly the same thing in the future under the same circumstances. After reviewing the incident, both the Florida Highway Patrol and the Florida State Department of Law Enforcement concurred with Cole, ruling that his actions were “justified.” Maudsley’s family has filed a lawsuit against the FHP, which is protected from public accountability through the legal fiction called “sovereign immunity.”

Read more here. Watch the video of the Taser assault here.