Official’s Ouster Sought Over Queens Attack

Three dozen chanting protesters marched in front of police headquarters Saturday, demanding the ouster of the police commissioner and charging that he mishandled the investigation of a racial attack in Queens.

“Stop the police cover-up--justice for Michael Griffith,” members of the group repeated, alternating with: “Ward must resign.”

Benjamin Ward, the city’s first black police commissioner, has been accused by lawyers for two survivors of the attack and by black community activists of ignoring statements by survivor Cedric Sandiford.

Griffith, 23, was struck and killed by a car on Dec. 20 after he and the two other black men were beaten and chased by a group of white youths outside a pizzeria in the largely white Howard Beach section of Queens.