Sun-Sentinel reporter Brian Haas looks at the lingering questions one year after a Sunrsie, Florida SWAT team shot and killed Anthony Diotaiuto:

His room looks like a typical 23-year-old’s: Clothes spill out of the hamper, DVDs and video games are jumbled together on a shelf under his television, and his bed is a mess.

Squeeze past the cream couch and stereo, under posters of rapper 50 Cent and martial arts expert Bruce Lee, and you come to his white closet door, with a poster of Britney Spears.

Just below her right arm is a bullet hole. Through it, you can see straight through the door and two walls. One year ago today, Anthony Diotaiuto was shot and killed in that closet by the Sunrise Police Department’s SWAT team in a pre-dawn raid. Police were looking for evidence he was dealing drugs. They found an ounce of marijuana.

Since that day, little has changed for his mother, Marlene Whittier. She still lives in the house. She refuses to take off the necklace and cross her son used to wear. Most of all, she avoids his bedroom.

“It’s been the most difficult year of my life, to tell you the truth,” Whittier said. “How much worse can it get?”

She still doesn’t know why police were so aggressive with her son. He worked two jobs, went to college, attended church and saved to buy the house the two were living in.

A year later, only two new details have come to light: Sunrise police cleared the two officers who shot Diotaiuto, and the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office acknowledged police waited three hours after the shooting to contact a coroner.

The grand jury investigating the shooting has been rescheduled at least twice, holding up the release of nearly any information on the raid.

[...]

Sunrise police declined to answer a dozen questions submitted to them this week, including whether SWAT teams are still being used to serve search warrants. Lt. Roger Torres, speaking for the department, said city attorneys suggested the department not comment. Diotaiuto had a concealed weapon’s permit, a “major factor” in justifying use of the SWAT team, police have said.

Whittier retained the law firm of Conrad & Scherer to look into her son’s death. Attorney William Scherer Jr. is suing for documents on the raid.

“We are full of frustration. Its one-year anniversary is coming up. We don’t have a copy of the autopsy, we don’t have a copy of the police report,” Scherer said. “All we have is a dead boy.”

It’s hard to come up with a benign reason why the Diotaiuto family and the press still haven’t been given access to those basic documents. Hats off to Haas for sticking with this story. Too often, the reporters who cover these cases forget about them, and allow the important questions to go unanswered.

Also, one can’t help but wonder if the wheels of justice would be turning this slowly if Diotaiuto were in fact a drug dealer, had survived the raid, and had killed a police officer in the process.

Gun rights activists might want to ponder the significance of the sentence I’ve bolded in the blockquote.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 9:45 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Police Militarization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.