Posted on 10/06/2012 9:48:13 AM PDT by Altariel
Tamon Robinson was in coma after struck by cop vehicle
TAMON ROBINSON tried to outrun cops, but couldn’t.
The 27-year-old coffee barista died in April after being struck by an NYPD squad car that began chasing him as he swiped paver stones in the predawn light at his Brooklyn housing project.
Now his mom’s being chased anew, hounded by a collection agency hired by the city with a cruel final demand, the Daily News has learned.
The city has ordered her to pay the $710 cost of repairing the police car that killed her boy.
“We’re still grieving, and this is like a slap in the face,” Robinson’s mom, Laverne Dobbinson, 45, told The News.
“They want my son to pay for damage to the vehicle that killed him. It’s crazy.”
The blood-money letter dated Sept. 27 and mailed to her son seeks $710 for “property damage to a vehicle owned by the New York Police Department.”
It also threatens to slap the family with a lawsuit if the claim isn’t paid.
“Isn’t there respect for the dead?” asked John Torrence, 50, the victim’s uncle.
Police said Robinson was fleeing after being caught red-handed stealing the decorative stones from the grounds of the Bayview Houses in Canarsie on April 12.
He ran toward his building on E. 102nd St., but he was struck by the vehicle driven by Officer Volkan Uretener.
Robinson slipped into a coma and never regained consciousness, dying six days later of blunt impact head injuries.
The city medical examiner ruled his death an accident.
A spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said Thursday that the incident remains under investigation. The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau was also probing allegations from witnesses that Robinson was deliberately mowed down.
Photos taken of the squad car show a large indentation on the front, left-hand side of the vehicle.
Dobbinson’s lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein, has filed a notice of intent to sue the city, and he’s warned the NYPD not to do any repairs. Any modifications to the car would be a violation of a court order to preserve it as evidence in the pending criminal investigation.
Rubenstein called the $710 bill a “disgrace.”
“In my 40 years of practicing law in this city I have never seen anything as heartless as this,” he said.
A man who identified himself as a paralegal for the law firm of Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson, which was hired by the city to collect the money, said he is barred by federal law from discussing the notice with anyone but Robinson or a representative of his family.
An NYPD spokesman did not return a call or email seeking comment.
Dobbinson said her family has been dismayed from the start by the lack of respect shown by the city. As Robinson lay brain dead in Brookdale Medical Center, cops kept him shackled to his bed under police guard.
Dobbinson said she had to get permission from the NYPD to visit her son’s bedside — and was permitted to stay for only 20 minutes.
In a made-for-movie twist, on the day of Robinson’s funeral, cops broke down the door of the family’s apartment — and later acknowledged they had executed a search warrant at the wrong location. The city repaired the door the same day, according to Dobbinson.
At the time of his death, Robinson worked at a Connecticut muffin shop in Fort Greene, but also tried to make extra money hawking items, including the paving stones, to scrap dealers, his mother said.
Dobbinson suggested that instead of repairing the damaged squad car, NYPD officials should instead make sure it’s never again returned to patrol.
“Just like those officers shouldn’t be on the street, either,” she said.
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