NEW BEDFORD — Police Chief Ronald E. Teachman can envision the day when one of his officers will have to arrest a shooting victim for not cooperating with police.
"I've said many times that every shooting and stabbing is like a homicide, because the victims don't want to cooperate," he said. "Even as they're lying in their hospital bed, they're giving us attitude. They act like we shot them."
Chief Teachman said some of the victims "are more concerned about their street credibility, about maintaining their tough-guy appearance. They'll say to my investigators, 'I'll take care of this myself.'"
Reasons for witness silence are as complex as the crimes they witnessed, investigators said. Some witnesses are afraid to testify out of fear of retaliation, either to themselves or loved ones. Still, others have their own criminal issues that they fear will be unveiled if they talk with police.
But investigators have started taking a more aggressive stance with witnesses who refuse to divulge what they know. Thanks to the state's rewritten witness intimidation law, prosecutors and police are now able to arrest potential witnesses for obstruction of justice if they refuse to answer questions. (An obstruction of justice charge had always been in the legal arsenal of federal investigators. State investigators were only given the power last year, under the reworked witness intimidation law.)
Authorities have always had the power to arrest witnesses who intentionally mislead investigators, and, lately, police and prosecutors have been more willing to do so.
Police have charged Jessica Silveira of New Bedford with witness tampering in the horrific abuse of her 3-year-old daughter. Police believe Ms. Silveira lied and misled investigators about the bite marks on her child's face and ear to protect her live-in boyfriend, according to Gregg Miliote, spokesman for Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter.
The witness intimidation charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in state prison, he said.
In a Fall River murder case this spring, three witnesses were arrested and charged with accessory to murder and witness tampering after they refused to tell people what they knew and saw. Arrests made in two Fall River cold-case murders, including the Susie Goulart case, were directly attributable to grand jury testimony given by previously reluctant witnesses, Mr. Miliote said.
"We are definitely taking a new tack that had not been used in previous years," said Mr. Miliote. "We're sending out a pretty strong message that if you lie to us, if you send us off on wild goose chases, we'll go after you." He said Mr. Sutter has also made it a priority to protect witnesses from potential threats as well, using money from state anti-gang and witness protection funds.
The thought of arresting someone who has just been shot or stabbed might seem extreme to some, but investigators have consistently been stymied by a "code of silence" on the streets:
The 2003 murder of Alvis Dexter James was witnessed by an estimated 100 people in the Neutral Zone bar, but police said the witnesses were told by a bar manager to say they saw nothing.
The family of teenager Marcus Cruz, shot in 2001, maintains that his friends know who shot him.
The 2002 shooting death of 17-year-old Ivandro Correia was witnessed by two groups of people: his friends and friends of the shooter. The 2003 Halloween night slaying of Cecil Lopes III, a UMass Dartmouth college student, was also witnessed by a large group of people. Both cases remain unsolved.
And the 2005 shooting of Justin Barry-Henderson by David "Crunchy" DePina and an unnamed accomplice also left one man, John Burgos Jr., clinging to life with two bullet wounds. Should Mr. Burgos help authorities find and arrest Mr. DePina's accomplice, authorities might also unravel another murder — Mr. DePina's mother, Bernadette DePina, shot in her bed four days after her son was arrested.
Chief Teachman said many of the cases the public and media label as "cold cases" are still actively being investigated. Investigators are hoping that a change in circumstance — like a person who has been intimidating witnesses either dying, being imprisoned or moving far enough away so as not to be an immediate threat — will bring witnesses forward.
"A lot of these cases are active files on a detective's desk. They're not gathering dust somewhere in an attic," he said. "They're just not in the public discussion, they're not on the front pages of your newspaper."
Mayor Scott W. Lang, a former prosecutor, said police and prosecutors are getting more people to come forward voluntarily and tell what they know about various crimes. But he said he agrees Mr. Sutter ought to use every legal weapon at his disposal to encourage witnesses to come forward.
"Nothing is more effective, in my opinion, than convening a grand jury to gather every lead that you possibly can to determine whether a crime has been committed, and who is responsible," Mayor Lang said.
He agreed with Chief Teachman that the time has come to begin charging some victims with obstruction if they do not tell investigators what they know about the person who attacked them.
"The victim knows, in 99 percent of cases, exactly who attacked them," he said. "Either they say they will handle it themselves or they are too fearful of retaliation if they say anything. That's just not acceptable. If we don't get cooperation, more aggressive attempts to get the information have to be done."
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