2nd Victim of Taser Fire: Officer Who Gave Order October 3, 2008
By ROBERT D. MCFADDEN and CHRISTINE HAUSER
He wanted to be an Air Force fighter pilot, but a hearing problem ended that dream. Devastated, he clammed for a while on Long Island, where he had grown up, then joined the New York Police Department.
He was levelheaded, calm, mild mannered, an ideal cop in many ways. In 21 years on the force, Michael W. Pigott made scores of arrests working in some of the city’s toughest precincts, won 20 medals for bravery and meritorious duty, and became a lieutenant in the elite Emergency Services Unit.
“Not your typical police officer,” said Jon O’Shaughnessy, a New York City fire marshal and an old friend. “That’s why he was a lieutenant. He was a very positive, upbeat guy. He could have retired last year.” The friend could say no more: His voice broke, and he began to cry.
Lieutenant Pigott, apparently distraught because he had authorized the Taser shooting last week of an emotionally disturbed man who pitched headlong to his death from a second-story building ledge, fatally shot himself on Thursday at the headquarters of the Emergency Services Unit in Brooklyn, the police said.
The lieutenant, who had been stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty in another unit after the Taser incident, killed himself with a single shot to the head from a 9-millimeter Glock handgun taken from another officer’s locker at Floyd Bennett Field, a former airfield in Brooklyn where several police divisions are located, officials said.
The lieutenant’s body and a suicide note, alongside pictures of his children, were found about 6 a.m. The text of the note was not disclosed, but a law enforcement official said the lieutenant may have believed that he might face charges in an inquiry and did not want to bring disgrace upon his family.
Lieutenant Pigott’s death came on his 46th birthday and only hours before the funeral of Iman Morales, 35, who died in the confrontation with officers in Brooklyn. It also came days after the lieutenant had publicly apologized and received departmental counseling for his own emotional distress over ordering the use of the Taser in what police officials called a violation of department guidelines. The case is being investigated by the police and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.
On the afternoon of Sept. 24, Mr. Morales, naked, ranting and swinging an eight-foot-long fluorescent light bulb at officers, tumbled to his death from a ledge atop a storefront security gate outside his building at 489 Tompkins Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, after Officer Nicholas Marchesona, on orders from Lieutenant Pigott, fired a Taser that immobilized him. He hit the pavement and suffered a fatal head injury. Officers had called for an inflatable cushion, but it did not arrive in time.
A day later, the police said Lieutenant Pigott’s order to use the Taser, which fires barbs that deliver a 5,000-volt shock, had violated department guidelines prohibiting its use in situations in which a person might fall from an elevated surface. The department also assigned a new commander to the Emergency Services Unit and ordered its 400 officers to take a refresher course on coping with mentally ill people.
The lieutenant’s suicide — one of about a half-dozen a year in the Police Department — underscored the intense pressures on New York’s emergency services officers, who confront as many as 80,000 emotionally disturbed people every year and often must make critical decisions in potentially deadly face-offs.
“It is worth remembering that our police officers are not supermen, but rather flesh and blood human beings who deal with life and death situations that most of us cannot even imagine on a daily basis,” said Thomas R. Sullivan, president of the Lieutenants Benevolent Association, who called Lieutenant Pigott an outstanding officer who had been a member of the Emergency Services Unit for six years.
The deaths of Lieutenant Pigott and Mr. Morales were reflected in expressions of sorrow on Thursday — in statements by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and among officers on the beat, in sobs at the funeral and burial of Mr. Morales and in the voices of mourning families and friends of the victims.
“The lieutenant was deeply distraught and extremely remorseful over the death of Iman Morales in Brooklyn last week,” the mayor said at a City Hall news conference. “Sadly, his death just compounds the tragedy of the loss of Mr. Morales.”
At Our Lady of Pompeii Church, at Bleecker and Carmine Streets in Greenwich Village, about 40 people attended the funeral for Mr. Morales. His mother, Olga Negron, held a wooden crucifix as pallbearers carried the coffin out.
On the sidewalk, Ann DeJesus Negron, Mr. Morales’s aunt, spoke briefly about Lieutenant Pigott’s death. “I’m sure he was asking for forgiveness,” she said. “And I’m sure that Iman would want us to forgive.” And, referring to the lieutenant’s family, she added, “I just wish that they find peace and healing and trust in life again.” At Rosedale and Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, N.J., 25 people attended Mr. Morales’s burial. His mother wailed and had to be held up as the coffin went into the ground.
On a quiet street in Sayville, N.Y., where Lieutenant Pigott lived with his wife, Susan, two sons and a daughter in a one-story house with brown siding, neighbors spoke of the lieutenant with affection as a personable, friendly man who tended his garden and lawns, walked a golden retriever and often stopped to pass the time of day.
The lieutenant, who earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautics from Dowling College, joined the Police Department in 1987 after failing, because of a hearing problem, to become an Air Force pilot. He did become a licensed civilian pilot, however, as well as a motor boat operator. His police work included many years as an officer and a sergeant working in Jamaica, Queens Village, Brownsville and elsewhere.
Six years ago, he joined the Emergency Services Unit, whose officers face a wide range of challenges, including rescuing window-washers dangling outside towers and trying to talk people out of killing themselves. The confrontation involving Mr. Morales, like his other assignments, was not routine.
Mr. Morales was described by neighbors as a quiet, polite tenant who formerly worked for a financial company, but in recent years had received public assistance and taken medication for a mental illness. They said he paid his rent on time, kept his one-bedroom apartment clean and never caused trouble.
In the days before his death, however, neighbors said Mr. Morales became increasingly distraught. He was heard shouting and agitated, having stopped taking his medication. His mother called the police, and emergency services was summoned. He climbed out his third-floor apartment window when officers went to his door, and, failing to get into a window on the fourth floor, climbed onto the storefront ledge.
The standoff lasted 22 minutes, the police said, and ended in Mr. Morales’s fatal fall when Lieutenant Pigott ordered him shot with the Taser. He was pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital Center. An amateur video of the incident was posted on Web sites and replayed on television news programs.
In the aftermath, Lieutenant Pigott was deeply affected by the death, by the announcement that he was apparently at fault and by decisions to strip him of his gun and badge and assign him to the fleet services division in Queens, in charge of vehicles. He was to answer phones, but worked at it for only one day. Both Lieutenant Pigott and Officer Marchesona had received counseling, officials said, but it did not seem to help the lieutenant.
On Tuesday, the day of a wake for Mr. Morales, Lieutenant Pigott spoke to a Newsday reporter outside his home, expressing regrets and apologies to Mr. Morales’s family and friends. “I am truly sorry for what happened to Mr. Morales,” he said.
On Thursday, a law enforcement official said, Lieutenant Pigott went to the headquarters of the Emergency Services Unit at Floyd Bennett Field. He apparently broke into the locker of another officer and took his handgun. The official said he set out his note, and pictures of his children, and shot himself.
Reporting was contributed by Cara Buckley, Daryl Khan, Colin Moynihan, Andy Newman, Nate Schweber and Karen Zraick.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/nyregion/03taser.html?hp
