The mother of a 31-year-old man who was fatally shot by police in 1999 has dropped a lawsuit that claimed the officers overreacted and used excessive force against her son. The family of Gidone Busch sought unspecified damages in the lawsuit, which was filed in August 2000 against the city and the five officers involved in the shooting.

The officers were cleared in a civil trial in 2003, but the following year a judge overturned the jury’s verdict, saying in his decision that the officers “gave exaggerated or overstated versions of the events, especially regarding key details about the shooting.”

Federal prosecutors decided in 2001 not to pursue criminal charges against the officers.

In a letter to U.S. District Judge John Gleeson, Busch’s mother, Doris Boskey, wrote that it “would take a lot to go through another civil trial.”

“It would be about putting a monetary value on a life that was precious, not about real justice or accountability,” she wrote.

Gleeson formally dismissed Boskey’s claim last week.

The officers had testified in the civil trial that after confronting Busch on a Brooklyn street, he attacked a sergeant with an 11-inch household hammer. When Busch, a Hasidic Jew, refused to drop the hammer, the officers said, they responded with a barrage of bullets. He was hit 12 times, including once in the back.

Some members of the Jewish community likened the case to the police killing of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who was shot 19 times in the Bronx in 1999. The four officers in that case were acquitted of criminal charges. The city in 2004 announced a $3 million settlement with Diallo’s family.
ND