Officer Acquitted in Shooting of Motorist

A former police officer accused of creating a Web site hostile toward blacks has been cleared in Pittsburgh in the 1998 shooting death of a black motorist during a chase. Jeffrey Cooperstein, who is white, was acquitted of homicide in a jury trial. “This is a victory in the legal sense of the word, but there’s no victory when a man has lost his life,” Cooperstein, 44, said. Cooperstein fired on Deron Grimmitt, 32, from outside his cruiser when Grimmitt’s car sped by after a chase by other officers. Cooperstein had said he feared the motorist would run him over and said he did not know Grimmitt was black. The trial did not determined if Cooperstein was the author of a racist Web site.