Dr. Gross covers up for New York police killings

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NEW YORK-Dr. Elliot M. Gross is the chief medical examiner for New York City. His complicity in covering up a string of notorious police homicides has erupted into a major scandal, sparked by a recent series of investigative articles in The New York Times (Jan. 27-30).

The articles revealed that Dr. Gross had consistently falsified official autopsy reports on people who had lost their lives in police custody or while being arrested. In all cases, Gross' distortions were designed to absolve the cops of any wrongdoing.

Dr. Gross' most outrageous falsifications occurred in the cases of Michael Stewart and Eleanor Bumpurs (see stories on this page). The blatantly racist nature of these killings has provoked a sustained outcry of protest from the Black community—a fact that no doubt influenced the Times' decision to investigate and expose Gross' cover-ups.

Since the Times articles appeared, five investigations into Gross' misdeeds have been launched-two by New York Michael Stewart:

"A police van bearing the unconscious body of Michael Stewart pulled into Bellevue Hospital at 3:22 a.m. on a warm September day in 1983.

"The doors swung open, and Mr. Stewart was lifted onto a hospital gurney. He had been hogtied-his ankles bound together, pulled behind his back, and tied to his hands with elastic cord. His body-s feet, 1l inches tall, 143 pounds—was covered with bruises.

"Mr. Stewart, a 25-year-old Black man, had been taken into custody by white transit police officers who accused him of writing graffiti in the subway. His heart was not beating. Resuscitation revived it, but he died 13 days later without regaining consciousness.

"Within hours, New York City's City Mayor Edward Koch, one by New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, one by New York state's attorney general, and one by a federal prosecutor. At least two of these inquiries could lead directly to without exception. I determined that the most likely source of the wounds was a beating."

According to a transit-police spokeswith a felt-tip marker. The cops denied beating Stewart; they claimed his injuries resulted from his own violence and their "restraining" him. They also claimed they had found cocaine on Stewart but were later forced to retract that charge.

Dr. Gross personally performed the autopsy on Stewart. After six hours-an indictments on criminal charges.

The case of Dr. Gross affords a rare peek behind the curtain of secrecy that ordinarily obscures the real social relations between the wealthy (white) ruling unusually long time-he finished the autopsy and went to his office to confer with a transit police detective. After emerging from this meeting he held a press conference and issued a written statement that said, "The cause of death is cardiac arrest pending further study... there was no evidence of physical injury resulting or contributing to death."

A month after Gross presented his preliminary findings, he announced his final official conclusions about Stewart's death. He said it resulted from an "injury to the spinal cord"-but he refused to indicate what had caused the injury. This would not contradict the official police report that Stewart had class and their cops, on the one hand, and the oppressed Black and Hispanic communities, on the other.

The deadly collusion between New York City's police and chief coroner is no aberration; it is part of the permanent, systematic intimidation that racial minorities in the United States face day in and day out. What has been exposed is simply one facet of the "justice" system's . institutionalization of racist injustice.

In the last analysis, the real function of the police in a capitalist society is not to direct traffic or fight petty crime; it is to defend the "right" of the ruling class to exploit the working class. They are the strike-breakers of last resort and the occupying army that patrols the Black and Latino communities to "keep them in their place."

As the ruling class's armed guards of the status quo, cops harbor a hostility to the oppressed that comes with the job.

The unmasking of Dr. Gross' whitewash operation, however, indicates that the ruling class's power of repression is not unlimited. The possibility of fighting back was shown by the protest activities that put the spotlight on the killings Gross was trying to cover up.

The removal of Dr. Gross will not stop the protests. The demands of the Black community that the murderers of Michael Stewart and Eleanor Bumpurs be brought to justice deserve the full support of all working people.

hurt himself during the arrest. The details of the autopsy itself, however, refute this contention.

Finally, in the wake of the Times articles and the announcement of five separate investigations into his misconduct, Gross admitted the possibility that Stewart died from "injuries which could have been inflicted by fists, by feet, by a nightstick."

The three transit cops who arrested Stewart were indicted, nine months after his death, on charges of manslaughter. The indictment was dismissed on the grounds that one of the grand jurors had acted improperly, but the case is now before a new grand jury.— report in the cops' favor when

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man, Stewart had written "three letters on the wall, RQS, about a foot high"