NYPD Detective Hassan Hamdy, who shot and killed unarmed National Guardsman Noel Palonco (Photo by Victor Alcom)

Remember last week when the world was riveted by the exploits of ex-LAPD officer Christopher Dorner? Many felt that the support of Dorner’s quest to expose the corruption and racism in the LAPD was unwarranted because he killed innocent people. One author went as far as to label it, “Nigga Neurosis”. But, no one seems to mind when police, over and over, murder unarmed people of color and get away with it.

There will be no manhunt for Hassan Hamdy, the NYPD detective who killed unarmed National Guardsman Noel Palonco. In fact, a grand jury cleared Hamdy of any wrongdoing, despite the fact he shot an unarmed man for supposedly cutting off an unmarked police vehicle in traffic. All Hamdy had to say was he, “feared for his life” because he thought Noel was, “reaching for a weapon”. And, even though the eye witness sitting in the car right next to Noel said he complied with the officer requests and ,”The last thing she saw was his hands on the steering wheel,” that wasn’t enough evidence for the grand jury.

Of course, the fact that Hamdy has a history of brutality didn’t seem to matter either. Dorothy Garcia told the New York Daily News, that Hamdy was one of the officers who barged into her house five years ago and brutalized her grandson, Tyrell:

“I’ll never forget his face,” Garcia, 74, said. “He told us they didn’t need a search warrant.” 

Hamdy, now 39, was part of a team of officers who arrested Tyrell Garcia in 2007,` on what turned out to be bogus charges.

In court papers, Tyrell Garcia claimed they sicced a police dog on him and tore up his body by dragging him across a fence — a torture the officers called “a cheese grater.”

“When they were here, they were very aggressive,” the grandmother recalled. “It was very frightening.”

The Garcia’s sued and in 2008 they won a $235,000 settlement from the city. The city, however, admitted no wrongdoing.

So why, despite Hamdy’s history and contradictory eye witness testimony, did the grand jury let Hamdy go free? They don’t even have to tell us. On Thursday a judge said, in a prepared statement, that he could not get into a grand jury’s decision because of laws surrounding grand jury secrecy.

So, if you were outraged by Dorner because he killed innocent people, how do you feel about a system that allows the police to kill innocent people everyday and get away with it? Well not everyday, just one every 36 hours.