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Sources tell NY1 that three witnesses heard the officer who fatally shot an armed, plainclothes off-duty officer In Harlem Thursday night identify himself as NYPD. Those three witnesses include the two other cops who arrived on the scene with officer Andrew who fired and the car break-in suspect that slain Officer Omar Edwards was chasing, Migueal Goitia. According to the Post, Goitia [earlier identified with the last name alias "Santiago"] has been hospitalized several times for unknown reasons since his arrest.
Investigators have been interviewing 26 civilian witnesses, transcripts of two 911 calls from civilians, and surveillance footage—it's unclear if the NYPD has surveillance footage depicting the shooting, but a group of Baptist ministers from the Baptist Ministers Conference are calling for the release of any surveillance video from that night. A wake for Edwards will be held today from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and Wednesday from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Woodward Funeral Home at 1 Troy Ave. in Brooklyn. His funeral will be Thursday at the Church of Our Lady of Victory at 583 Throop Ave. in Brooklyn, at a time to be determined.
Meanwhile, the NYPD has revised a training video instructing officers on how to handle "cop-on-cop" confrontations; the video is intended to reinforce departmental procedures for plainclothes officers at a crime scene. According to the NYPD Patrol Guide, if an off-duty officer is trying to make an arrest and is confronted by an on-duty officer, the off-duty officer must abandon the arrest effort and comply with the on-duty officer's orders.
An NYPD spokesman tells the Times that Officer Dunton yelled at Officer Edwards, "Police! Stop, drop the gun, drop the gun." But when Officer Edwards turned, the nose of his silver Smith & Wesson pistol "turned with him, toward Officer Dunton." Dunton fired six rounds, and the autopsy concluded that the fatal bullet actually entered the left side of his back before hitting his heart and left lung, but the NY Times reported on Sunday, "Investigators say they believe that the officer had turned, gun in hand, toward Officer Dunton after Officer Dunton yelled, 'Stop, police!' and that he may have been hit in the front first and then spun around by the force of the bullet."
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"Investigators say they believe that the officer had turned, gun in hand, toward Officer Dunton after Officer Dunton yelled, 'Stop, police!' and that he may have been hit in the front first and then spun around by the force of the bullet."
Or you can go with Ockham's Razor, which says the cop shot him in the back. Six times.
Or you can actually read the story and see that the autopsy shows some (if not most, it's not clear) of the bullets hit him in the front.
"group of Baptist ministers from the Baptist Ministers Conference are calling for the release of any surveillance video from that night"
wow don't mess with the baptists, they don't play...
"Gonna get me a religion, I’m gonna join the baptist church
That’s right
Gonna be a baptist preacher so that I won’t have to work"
he spun around by the force of the bullet??
what is this? the movies??
Well, he had to have spun around at one point: he was shot in the stomach and in the back.
General rule of thumb: Looks like a cop, sounds like a cop, smells like a cop, it's an on-duty officer.
If you are not in uniform flailing a gun, you are never assumed to be a cop, you are always a criminal first.
Sad story : |
Tragic. Though I do believe race is always involved at some psychological when there's a white-on-black shooting, that doesn't seem like an overriding factor here.
You can't run down the street in plain clothes with a gun out chasing someone and not expect to be shot by the cops. The off-duty cop made a big mistake (and was probably breaking the law) by chasing an unarmed thief down the street with a gun. As a civilian, you can't use deadly force unless you're faced with deadly force; and the perp in this case was clearly fleeing. The off-duty cop could have gotten another GPS, but sadly, his family can't get him back.
I agree, but it's important to mention that there is that anti-black subconscious bias you mention exists also in black people's minds. That a bias exists is regrettable, but I think it is unhelpful and misleading to imply that it only exists in "white-on-black" situations.
In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell sites a lot of research on this: http://www.gladwell.com/blink/biblio/chapter3.html
You can't run down the street in plain clothes with a gun out chasing someone and not expect to be shot by the cops.
You can if you're white.
Could Officer Andrew have shot to immobilize the off-duty cop? In the legs or buttocks (if he was facing the other way)?
All of whom may have self-serving reasons for making their claim. Maybe the "witness" needed a little coaxing?It is completely unreasonable and unsafe on a variety of levels to expect an officer to shoot to disable rather than shoot to kill. If you examine the Supreme Court decisions regarding use of deadly force by police officers, whether you kill a suspect or not, you have used deadly force, and that deadly force better have been justified. There is literally no legal basis/justification for shooting to disable. It not only endangers the officer(s) involved/responding to the shooting by possibly delaying reaction time, but also the general public as the officer(s) attempt to shoot, in a high stress situation, at hands, feet, or legs, instead of the center of target mass.
When I first read "three witnesses" have corroborated the alleged IDing, I figured that might help alleviate the tension. But, then I read that 2 of the 3 are cops??!?? How can they be reliable witnesses? I reliable witness is one who gives a statement to an Internal Affairs investigator and has not direct contact with any other police.
Who's the third witness? The cop's kid brother? Some random kid they promised not to beat the crap out of? Patrick Pogan?