James Nemorin: our fallen hero, by Garry Pierre-Pierre, The Haitian Times, 25 March 2003. English language.
Last Saturday, New York Police Department Detective James Nemorin was laid to rest. Thousands of people, including police, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and scores of elected officials turned out for the fallen officer. Conspicuously absent from the throng was “the Haitian community.” Sure there were some leaders and members of the Haitian Law Enforcement Fraternal Organization (HALEFO) and some other curious bystanders. Few people in the Haitian community understand the risks that James and his partner Rodney Andrews take in their line of work. That sort of thing simply does not exist in Haiti. They are undercover detectives who go where few dare go. They pose as gun buyers and try to arrest those who sell the guns in a dangerous effort to make us safer. For that they paid the ultimate price. They were shot dead by the two people who were supposed to sell them the guns. We do not know if their cover was blown or what happened on that fateful winter night. Most of those details probably died with the detectives when they were shot at point blank behind the head and thrown into a deserted street in Staten Island.
James is our hero, and instead of looking for hackneyed celebrities and politicians for leadership, we should look to people like James who dedicated his life to make ours better. I believe that James is the first Haitian-born NYPD officer to be killed in the line of duty in New York. That is no small feat. As warped as this may seem, I’m proud to know that James was one of our own. It was inevitable. For the last five years, the NYPD has undertaken an aggressive campaign to make the department more reflect the city.
As such, scores of Haitian-born people have applied and gotten into the force. James was one of them, having done so seven years ago. He was the crème de la crème of the department. He did a job so dangerous that few people volunteer for it. But the gun and drug unit, two of the most dangerous assignments in the department, are laden with blacks and Hispanics. Part of it is that this is a sure way for them to get ahead.
A stint on either goes a long way for an officer’s career. James served in both. I didn’t know James personally. But we shared many of the same friends and acquaintances. James brokered a truce when dueling promoters were bent on sabotaging a party at Club A in Queens last November. He brought them together and explained that if there were any violence at the club they would be arrested. He stressed that the last thing he wanted was to see a fellow Haitian jailed over some bruised ego. They listened to him and the party went on with little trouble inside the club. He told his friends war stories from his job.
He had guns pointed at his head so many times that it didn’t seem to bother him too much. It was just part of the job. Undercover, he was often the target of uniformed officers because he fit the profile of the criminal. In his job, he is part good guy and part bad guy. He has to be, it is the job. I’m certain that if James had died before Abner Louima, Patrick Dorismond and Georgy Louisgene, the Haitian community would have reacted differently. As saddened as we were, the community appeared numbed.
This is something that I’ve noticed about us lately. We’re not sure how to react about things. We’ve taken to the street to protest on behalf of victims only to be told we were freeloaders. We’ve marched against dictatorship in Haiti only to see the table turn on us. These are very confusing times for us in this land that we’re slowly adopting. We’re making this push into understanding American society, but it is oh-so-complex and confusing. Take heart, it is natural. We’ve just gotten into the game and we have to learn the rules. While I’m saddened that we didn’t come out in full force to support our James, I’m optimistic that we will learn from this and understand what it’s like to be a police officer in the United States. They are not all like Justin Volpe and Charles Schwarz, the officers who respectively assaulted Louima and helped cover it up. They are more like us. They do a very dangerous job and try to understand us.
Police officers have fear and sometimes those who go wrong do so mostly out of fear and ignorance. James was our own and beloved by his friends. He was a hard worker. Many of the Haitian cops would try to convince him to take a desk job or something less risky. But James would have none of that. He had paid his due in narcotics, so why was he in the gun squad, they wondered. The answer was simple. He wanted to remain at the top of his game and that’s where he could make the most impact.
Despite the warnings, James stayed in the gun squad and because of that, we lost a son, a father and a brother. James, you’ve made us proud to be Haitian. To us living in New York, James will be remembered in the same vein as our independence heroes like Toussaint Louverture and Jean Jacques Dessalines. When our history in the United States is written, James’ death will be a watershed moment. Farewell, my friend.
