In the early morning hours of March 16, 2000, Patrick Moses Dorismond, a 26-year-old Haitian-American security guard and father of two, was standing with a friend outside a cocktail lounge in New York City. His life was about to take a tragic and abrupt turn. An undercover police officer, part of a narcotics unit, approached Dorismond and his friend and asked where he could purchase marijuana.
Dorismond, who was not a drug dealer, took offense at the suggestion and loudly declared his innocence. What began as a verbal exchange quickly escalated into a physical altercation.
The accounts of what happened next diverge sharply. According to the police, an angered Dorismond became the aggressor, throwing a punch at one of the officers and, along with his friend Kevin Kaiser, initiating a brawl. Another detective, Anthony Vasquez, stated he came to his partner's assistance after hearing someone shout, 'Get his gun!' Vasquez reported that he drew his service weapon, identified himself as a police officer, and that Dorismond then grabbed the gun, causing it to fire a single, fatal shot into his chest. However, Dorismond's friend, Kevin Kaiser, provided a starkly different narrative. Kaiser maintained that the undercover officers were aggressive, never identified themselves as law enforcement, and that one of the cops instigated the physical fight by striking Dorismond first. An ambulance arrived minutes after the shooting, but the bullet had struck Dorismond's aorta and a lung, and he bled to death before he could be saved at the hospital.
The aftermath of the shooting was fraught with tension and controversy. Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani faced widespread criticism for releasing Dorismond's sealed juvenile record, a move many saw as an attempt to posthumously discredit him and justify the police's actions. The officer who fired the fatal shot, Detective Anthony Vasquez, was not arrested. On July 27, 2000, a grand jury investigated the shooting but declined to indict Vasquez, concluding that the shooting was accidental. No criminal charges were ever filed against the officer for the death of Patrick Dorismond. In March 2003, the City of New York agreed to a $2.25 million settlement with Dorismond's family to resolve a lawsuit they had filed.
