Police officers were taped joking about a dying, homeless Guatemalan immigrant after he was found on the side of a deserted road in their suburban town, a television station reported.
A homeless immigrant found dying by a deserted road had asked a police officer to take him there because he was trying to avoid a man he had menaced a few days before, the officer’s lawyer told a newspaper.
Mount Kisco Police Officer George Bubaris has pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges in the death of Rene Perez, who was from Guatemala. The case has raised questions about police treatment of immigrants in suburbs north of New York City.
“You wanna hear something really funny? … He’s alive “ a Bedford police officer tells a sergeant on a taped phone call. The 42-year-old Perez had a history making drunken 911 calls, and he’d had a series of contacts with police in Mount Kisco and neighboring Bedford on the night he died. Bedford police had taken him into Mount Kisco , hours later, prosecutors say, Bubaris drove Perez back to Bedford, dealt him a deadly blow to the abdomen and abandoned him to die.
The Advocate says: