The New York Times-20080128-Shooting Highlights a Growing Gap in White Plains

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Shooting Highlights a Growing Gap in White Plains

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A van pulls up outside the Westchester County Department of Social Services in downtown White Plains every weekday morning, discharging homeless men who live in a shelter five miles to the north. The men are brought there for appointments -- with substance-abuse and mental-health counselors, or with social workers who hope to find them jobs -- joining dozens of other poor people there in need of public assistance.

Then, around 5 p.m., the men convene on the sidewalk outside, in the shadows of luxury condominium buildings, waiting for their ride back to the shelter.

Those who live and work nearby have grown accustomed to them. Syed Rahman, who manages an ice cream store near the social services offices, said Sunday: I'd never seen anybody fighting. Never.

On Friday, however, a fight involving at least one of the shelter's residents broke out before the van arrived to pick up the men, the authorities said. An off-duty police officer from Mount Vernon, Christopher A. Ridley, who was passing by, tried to intervene; he either pulled out his gun or picked up a gun dropped by one of the brawling men, and was shot dead by Westchester County police officers who responded to the dispute.

It was not the first time that the presence of the homeless in downtown White Plains had led to confrontation or worse. Last year an informal shelter was closed after White Plains officials complained, and in 2005, a homeless man stabbed a woman to death in a parking garage.

The White Plains police are investigating the shooting, but have released only a few superficial details, leaving witnesses' accounts to fill in the rough outlines. According to some accounts, the Westchester County police officers ordered Officer Ridley several times to drop the gun, and when he did not, they fired at him.

You had a police officer trying to do the right thing and other police officers trying to do the same, and what you were left with was one officer dead and other officers traumatized, Kevin S. Mandel, president of the City of Mount Vernon Police Association, a police union, said on Sunday.

With questions still unanswered, the issue of race was slowly coloring the events, in veiled and overt ways. On Saturday the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has emerged as representative of Officer Ridley's family, said that race should not be ruled in -- or out -- as a factor in the shooting.

On Sunday, at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, where Officer Ridley's father, Stanley, is the head custodian, Mr. Sharpton was more forceful. Black men, he said, are not all hoodlums and criminals to be cast away.

The church's spiritual leader, the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, might have set the tone for the service, telling the 900 congregants, most of them black, that if black men have a gun near you, you're ready for execution.

Referring to Officer Ridley, Mr. Richardson added: As far as I'm concerned, Chris was executed on the streets of White Plains, and as a congregation, we're not going to stand by and let business be done as usual.

He also said that Officer Ridley was shot four to five times, in the back of the head, chest, hip and wrist, and by four officers. Earlier accounts had indicated that Officer Ridley was shot twice. The White Plains public safety commissioner, Frank G. Straub, said Sunday that he had no comment on Mr. Richardson's statement. The authorities have not provided the names or races of the county officers involved.

White Plains, which has about 60,000 residents, is not known for racial discord, but as its downtown undergoes an unprecedented building boom, and as more residents move to the million-dollar apartments built there, tensions have bubbled to the surface, particularly over the issue of homelessness.

In 2005, two events inflamed the conflict. The stabbing was committed by one of several homeless sex offenders who were bused to White Plains every morning from a shelter at the airport in Valhalla and then picked up at the end of the day, a practice that has since been stopped.

Then, after the county closed one of its overnight shelters, it opened a drop-in center for homeless men in the basement of the social services building, on Court Street in White Plains.

But the drop-in shelter was not around for long. The county closed it in August, after intense pressure from White Plains officials, who said the city already provided 500 beds for the homeless and should not have to bear any more burden.

Susan Tolchin, chief adviser to the county executive, Andrew J. Spano, said that the homeless men who were on Court Street on Friday had a reason to be there, which was for their appointments.

The shelter where they live, near the county jail in Valhalla, is operated by a charity organization, Volunteers of America, under contract to the county.

The man whom the police said Officer Ridley was struggling with, Anthony Jacobs, was a resident of that shelter. He was arrested on a charge of second-degree assault. It was unclear whether Mr. Jacobs had an appointment at the social services office on Friday. But Ms. Tolchin said on Sunday, What happened to the officer is not related to the county's homeless policies.

When the drop-in shelter was open, homeless people used to congregate downtown, but no more, said Joel Lattimore, who manages a video and music store on Mamaroneck Avenue, not far from the county building.

You have your typical vagrant, he said. But it's not really a haven for homeless.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Felita Bouche, Officer Christopher A. Ridley's mother, at church Sunday in Mount Vernon. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB BENNETT FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)