Tate-Brown supporters: DA should reopen probe into police shooting of unarmed man

SUPPORTERS OF a man killed by police during a routine car stop in Mayfair called on District Attorney Seth Williams yesterday to reopen his probe into Brandon Tate-Brown's death, saying officers' lies and sloppy evidence-handling led Williams to wrongly clear the cops.

Attorney Brian Mildenberg also urged Commissioner Charles Ramsey to return Officers Nicholas Carrelli and Heng Dang to desk duty - and take away their guns - until Williams can examine 50 pages of witness interviews and other documents the city released last week as part of Mildenberg's wrongful-death lawsuit.

Police said after the Dec. 15 incident that officers stopped Tate-Brown for driving at night with his daytime running lights, that a violent struggle erupted after officers saw a handgun in his center console and tried to arrest him, and that Carrelli shot Tate-Brown once in the head as he reached into his passenger-side door for the gun.

Tate-Brown's family has protested that it was an unjustified car stop, that nervous rookies (on the force since May 2013) shot him after he broke free and ran around the rear of his car, and that police planted a stolen, loaded gun to cover up a bad shooting.

Williams' "conclusion that a crime did not occur was based on the false story that Brandon Tate-Brown was reaching into his vehicle for a gun, which has now been completely and utterly debunked and is not fact," Mildenberg said during a news conference outside City Hall yesterday. "The police have now changed their story."

Yesterday, Ramsey told the Daily News he will not remove Carrelli and Dang from the street and attributed the initial false narrative of the incident to the confusion - and occasional misinformation - that plague the chaotic early days of any investigation.

"There were no lies told," Ramsey said. "In an effort to try to get information out publicly as quick as we can, it's not uncommon for some things to be slightly different at a later point in time, once all the witness statements are in, forensic evidence and the like."

The D.A. had "the entire investigative packet" when he decided not to criminally charge Carrelli and Dang, Ramsey said.

Williams said yesterday said he will not reopen his investigation.

"The evidence showed . . . that Brandon Tate-Brown had a gun in the car with his DNA on it, tried to get it on more than one occasion and was shot because he put two Philadelphia police officers and everyone else who was at the scene that evening in danger," Williams said in a prepared statement. "My sympathies go out to the Tate-Brown family, but I stand by my decision . . . What happened was tragic, but not criminal."

Activists, meanwhile, called for outside review.

"There is a culture of corruption that protects those that take advantage of the weak and the innocent," said the Rev. Mark Tyler, pastor of the Mother Bethel AME Church. "We believe the only way we will get the truth is if the federal government comes in."

Tanya Brown-Dickerson, Tate-Brown's mother, agreed: "Accountability is all I'm asking. It is 'we the people.' It is not 'we the FOP.' Seth Williams, you are here to protect 'we the people' . . . Stop ignoring police brutality. It is real. It happens. And it should not be allowed. Accountability, accountability, accountability."

Blog: phillyconfidential.com