ALBANY, N.Y. – A grand jury’s decision not to indict officers involved in a fatal encounter with an unarmed Black man illustrates a hard reality for a special unit created to investigate deaths at the hands of police: Few of the probes overseen by New York’s attorney general have led to charges against officers.
The Daniel Prude case marks the third time a grand jury has declined to bring charges in a case handled by the Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit, created in 2015 amid an outcry over police skirting punishment in the deaths of unarmed Black people.
The unit has yet to win a conviction. Still, legal experts credit it for dispelling the secrecy that surrounded police prosecutions in New York and for avoiding potential