Hits: 10

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. OCTOBER 8, 2013:

The White Plains Department of Public Safety terminated the employment of Officer Steven Hart on September 19, the Commissioner of Public Safety David Chong announced Monday to The Journal News, after a departmental hearing.

Hart is one of three officers accused in a $21 million federal lawsuit brought by the family of Kenneth Chamberlain who was shot and killed in an early morning standoff with police in Chamberlain’s Winbrook apartment November 19,2011.  Chamberlain, police said was about to stab a police officer as officers entered his apartment after breaking down the door. Chamberlain had previously threatened the officers.

Commissioner David Chong is quoted by reporter Richard Liebson as saying, “I thought the best thing moving forward, for the department and the community, was that he be separated from service.”

The federal law suit is still moving forward. Hart is reported in the Journal News report as  seeking legal means to getting himself reinstated.

Hart was accused of addressing Chamberlain with a common racial slur during the attempts by police to remove him from the apartment. However, Hart’s lawyer, the paper reports, a forensic expert, hired by Hart’s legal team to analyze tapes of the verbal exhanges said  that no racial slur was used.