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A police officer shot and killed a man "wielding a chair as a weapon" in Coney Island yesterday afternoon. According to WCBS 2, "the shooting happened outside a church used as a truancy center after a group of students inside reported seeing the man walk into the lot and attempt to break into a car."
When two police officers arrived, the man charged at the cops with a folding chair. The NY Times reports that he "kept moving toward" Officer Dawn Ortiz--in spite of being told in English and Spanish to drop the chair--and "was poised to strike her with the chair." When the man was perhaps a foot away, Ortiz fired her gun a single time, at the man's chest. He was pronounced dead at Coney Island Hospital.
A police source told the Daily News, "We don't know who he is... He had no ID on him. All he had was a cell phone, and we're trying to trace him through that." Ortiz, who had to take the required Breathalyzer test (mandatory after the Sean Bell shooting), was doing "fine," according to a niece.
And the NYPD is investigating whether the shooting was within guidelines. According to the NY Times, "the use of deadly physical force" is permitted "when there is an immediate risk of death or serious injury to a police officer or someone else."
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Get ready fo Chuck Schumer's Sunday press conference on the urgent need for chair control legislation.
this guy shouldn't be watching so much professional wrestling. i blame the sci-fi channel.
ECW! ECW! As I am not a police officer, I still wonder why the need to blow this person away? Why not shoot the arm? The leg? The shoulder? the foot? WHy use a gun? Why not a taser? They used a taser on the naked man months ago. It is a thankless job, but shooting someone brandishing a folding chair seems excessive.
Umm...isn't this what pepper spray and tasers are for?
why does Gothamist post old news?
This is getting silly now
C'mon guys, tasers and pepper spray. Especially if he's walking towards you incrementally.
Why not shoot the arm? The leg? The shoulder? the foot?
I always laugh when I see comments like this. Once and for all, real life is not like the movies. Most firearm professionals, with the exception of the most elite level of soldier, cannot accurately shoot a small, moving target on the human body, like the arm or the foot, especially under stress, like someone charging you with a metal chair. Cops are taught to aim for center mass, and you don't shoot to wound, you shoot to kill.
ECW indeed! That will be the next step in professional wrestling... the use of handguns.
@rocknrope-It was a hypothetical question. I am glad life isn't like a spaghetti western. Oh but wait it is! Man runs at officer with a folding chair, man executed. Don't question the sheriff.
Not to sound racist, but she was probably 4'11', 95 lbs.
^ hispanic too?
I am sorry, but this is ridiculous. If a loony came at me with a metal chair, I'd dance out the way, like the Matador I secretly am, and then--using the training I would expect to receive as a Police Office, I would either give the loon a slap, or wrestle him to the ground. Then I'd have a serious word. But to shoot him? Give me a break: it's a disgrace. I don't want to read that Ortiz is "fine", I want to know that she has been "charged".
If the woman officer is as petite and light-weight as some of the female cops I've seen (they look like they're in 7th grade some of them) she knows she is not capable of physically subduing anyone larger than a Muppet. That might be why her first impulse is to shoot.
A coward with a gun is deadly because they can only see their own death. Fear of their imminent demise blinds them to the range of options one has in a situation such as this, their only instinct is to survive and they become savage and kill.
"They say that it was so hot in the city today, grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot."
What ever happened to the self defense tactics that are allegedly taught in police academy?
I can see not wanting to miss when aiming at a hand or foot, but what about a large chair? Seems like that might make a decent target.
"I can see not wanting to miss when aiming at a hand or foot, but what about a large chair? Seems like that might make a decent target."
You're kidding, right? The round would simply pass right through the chair, hitting... who knows? The guy holding it? Some innocent bystander?
That's the reason for the "center of mass" policy: the best chance not only of hitting and stopping the person who is the target, but also of not hitting unintended targets.
"Umm...isn't this what pepper spray and tasers are for?
NYPD Police Officers don't carry tasers. The recent policy change was that Sergeants will carry them; prior to that Sergeants had tasers in their car trunks.
Pepper Spray only has a range of a couple feet, and would be ineffective if the guy was charging at her and had gotten to within a foot away at the time, as reported above.
Prior to that moment it's impossible to say if anything else could have been done. Two cops were there, maybe they had time to have taken some less lethal action but maybe they hadn't. They confront the guy, who is brandishing the chair. They order him to drop it, he doesn't. They repeat the order... and he charges at one of them from a few feet away. What are the options?
By the way, regarding metal folding chairs as weapons... remember the case of Firefighter Walsh and the fight at his Staten Island firehouse. He sustained life threatening injuries including an orbital fracture, broken nose, and a fractured skull. From a single strike with a metal chair.
If the guy was standing one foot away before she shot him, as the article says, it would not have been too difficult to aim at one of his legs or arms.
keep piling em up nypd! I for one a sick of being menaced by minorities with chairs and table legs and folding tables and 2x4s everywhere i go.
I have seen cops use their billy clubs on prone, defenseless individuals... They beat them about the legs and arms repeatedly for reasons unbeknownst to me. Why not take a few whacks at this guy before you fire away?
"If the guy was standing one foot away before she shot him, as the article says, it would not have been too difficult to aim at one of his legs or arms."
The article doesn't say he was standing a foot away when he was shot, it says he was charging at her. That would mean, within a split second of hitting her.
And again, in any case, to shoot at an arm or leg would be a violation of NYPD policy (and that of almost any police agency in the US).
It's extremely, extremely difficult to place a shot in a person's arm or leg, especially if it's a moving target. Pistols, especially a mid sized round like 9mm are pretty inaccurate on the whole.
All the movies where people are shooting at each other, and no one gets hit? That's much more realistic that shooting to incapacitate someone. The cops can't win. If they shoot someone they're criminals, and if they don't prevent the crime they aren't doing their job.
Don't want the cops to shoot you? Don't swing a chair at someone! Pretty easy.
And again, in any case, to shoot at an arm or leg would be a violation of NYPD policy (and that of almost any police agency in the US).
Yes, it's so much better to be shot in the chest and killed instead. Of course, the officer could have shot the upper legs (which make large and not particularly fast-moving target) and said the gun went off prematurely. But nooo, we know NYPD cops don't lie, right? Except when it's for their own benefit.
Yes, but it's perfectly acceptable to shoot at someone's feet in order to make them dance!
Wow, the ignorance of people who pretend to know more than they really do astounds me.
Sorry, but somehow I doubt NYPD teaches folks how to defend against metal chairs about to be stuck to your head. Especially to female officers.
I don't think the officer is a criminal. I am just wondering what goes through their minds when they need to make these life or death decisions. I am safely ensconced in my office reading a report on the situation... I don't have anyone swinging a chair at me. I thought their training was diverse enough so that they didn't have to resort to shooting this person. There have been videos posted to this site of police beating a prone man with batons across the legs when he appeared to have been subdued already. Then I read about allegations of a radio antenna being stuck up a person's rectum. I saw footage of tasers blasting a naked man off an awning-resulting in his demise. We have seen a cop shove a cyclist off his bike onto the pavement. All very disturbing negative imagery. It isn't Hollywood either. Is it the stress of the job? Are these cops merely an anomaly? It is a thankless job and I feel badly for the officer and the deceased.
"Yes, it's so much better to be shot in the chest and killed instead."
Of course it isn't. If you're taking it from that perspective, it's so much better not to attack a cop with a large metal object in the first place.
If you do, there's a good chance you'll be shot.
@Jaycjay- According to the NYP article "Law-enforcement sources said the suspect was a foot away from Ortiz with the chair when she pulled the trigger."
One shot and waiting until the last moment (1 foot away)..... Job well done.
For the record I expect anyone who attacks a cop with a chair, or just about anything else, to be shot. Please feel free to shoot someone attacking me too. And please don't wait till he is a foot away.
Now to the man who is dead. What are the odds he is yet another mentally ill new yorker who has slipped through the gaping holes in our system. Could this have been avoided? Stay tuned.
"There have been videos posted to this site of police beating a prone man with batons across the legs when he appeared to have been subdued already.
That's part of the prescribed "escalation of physical force" in order to get a subject to submit. A person on the ground still refusing to put his hands in position to be cuffed is resisting; until he's cuffed there's a possibility he has a gun or knife concealed which could come into play.
Escalation means strike first the upper leg, then move to the upper arm, then escalate to the forearm (which could result in a broken bone, which is less likely on the larger portions of the extremities). Certainly it is sometimes abused, and continues after a person has given up. "Unofficial" training includes shouting "stop resisting" while using any physical force.
My point here has been that I can see this situation developing quickly such that there was no opportunity to use non-lethal force. Again, these cops wouldn't have tasers; only sergeants do. There were two cops, they'd have to get close in order to use batons, and a folding chair is bigger and longer than a baton. They can't get into a fencing match with him.
With some time to maneuver, maybe they could have gotten into a position where he could have been tackled or where they could have used pepper spray. But only one of them would have to get close to use spray or it could have also disabled the other cop. And again, he has the chair... getting close enough to use spray means being almost in range of that.
So while trying to work that out and move into position where different options might open, he raises the chair and charges one of them. Now what?
In addition to Jaycjay's accurate analysis, this is Darwinism at his finest. He was clearly outmatched. It was 2 on 1 and they had guns versus his chair. What did he think the outcome was going to be? Typically, if someone points a gun at me I do what they ask me to and that's why I'm not lying dead in the street under a folding chair. Oh and fuck thieves too.
@ Jrod: "was a foot away" is not the same as "was standing still."
From the same Post article: "he began charging toward them."
He charged at her with the chair, when he got within a foot -- certainly within striking distance -- she defended herself using the only option she had left.
Clearly this guy was emotionally disturbed, and it's sad that the situation ended the way it did. But EDP or not, he created the situation (first with his attempt to break into a car) and he used a dangerous weapon to attack a cop.
Too bad she was put in that situation, but if she hadn't fired and had let him hit her with the chair, the only difference in the end would have been that she could have been seriously injured. He'd still have been shot -- by her partner.
@ jayclay thank you for taking the time to write coherent replies. I appreciate that
What ever happened to shooting someone in the legs or using a Taser or employing a baton or using Mace or just simply punching the guy in the mouth? How about just wrestling the guy down between the TWO officers present?
Why is it that Amerikan police ALWAYS go straight for their guns no matter how many OTHER options were available at the time?
Could it be that the USA is REALLY a nation of psychopathic murderers who value their own citizens lives as much as they value the lives of innocent little Iraqi children (=ZILCH)?
SUCK ON THAT THOUGHT FOR AWHILE.
#37- You talk a lot of shit.
Why don't you become a cop/soldier/politician and change things from the inside, hmmmmmmmm?
"What ever happened to shooting someone in the legs or using a Taser or employing a baton or using Mace or just simply punching the guy in the mouth?"/
What ever happened to reading the discussion before posting? Not really worth going through all that again.
"How about just wrestling the guy down between the TWO officers present?"/
Sure. They could have followed the example of those two transit cops wrestling that fare jumper on the subway platform trying to handcuff him... before he managed to get one of their guns and shoot them both.
comment #8 said it best.
Do any of you have any concept of how fast these situations jump off? Picture someone even 6 feet away swinging a chair while charging at you. It will not take much time for them to close that distance. It happens in the blink of an eye. Literally. You know how you all come on here to make fun of how many bullets cops fire and miss? That's because it's really hard to aim at a moving target under pressure.
So the cop should take a chair to their person instead of subduing this perp? You're out of your minds. Clean shooting, 100%.
Another 100% rule: Attack a police officer with or without a weapon, prepare to be owned.
Welcome to Barack HUSSEIN Obama's Amerikka where chairs are deadly weapons and gay marriage is banned even though the president is open minded, progressive and liberal.
Wow, Hugo, you just can't stop thinking about him.