Police say a New York City police officer who had just gotten off work was shot and killed by a fellow officer while chasing a suspect who had broken into his car.
The victim, Officer Omar Edwards, was not wearing a bulletproof vest when he was shot, according to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. The medical examiner’s officer confirmed that Edwards was shot three times with the fatal bullet striking him in the back.
The shooting happened around 10:30 Thursday night within blocks of a Harlem police station.
Kelly said the 25-year-old Edwards, died about an hour later at Harlem Hospital. A makeshift memorial was started outside of the officer’s home.
Kelly said investigators “working to get a fuller picture of what transpired,” but the chain of events began when Edwards noticed a man rummaging through his car and starting chasing him with his gun drawn.
Plainclothes officers spotted the chase and intervened. Kelly says one of those officers got out of his vehicle and fired six times, hitting Edwards in the arm and chest. Kelly said Edwards did not fire his weapon.
Edwards is black and the officer who shot him is white. Edwards joined the department in July 2007. He was married with two children.
The man who he had originally started chasing has been arrested. He was initially identified as Miguel Santiago.
Marchers rallied at the scene of the deadly mistaken identity shooting, demanding answers Saturday.
The community and its leaders are calling for a federal investigation.
The Reverend Al Sharpton addressed the crowd, hundreds strong, calling for a federal investigation in to the shooting death of Officer Omar Edwards by another fellow cop. It was a horrifying case of mistaken identity, and not the first.
“We have an obligation to have independent people look at it and say why [it happened],” Sharpton said.
The demonstrators marched along 125th Street to where it intersects with Second Avenue, the spot where the killing happened.
There were prayers and a moment of silence at the vigil.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly met with the family at their Ocean Hill, Brooklyn home and, on Saturday morning, Mayor Michael Bloomberg did the same. Later, he talked about the investigation and indicated that it is complicated and could be lengthy.
“There are some eyewitnesses and ear witnesses, and we’ll try to establish whether the procedures that are in place were followed, and also whether or not those procedures are adequate,” Bloomberg said.
According to police procedure, it is up to an off duty officer to prove to he is a cop to responding officers, remaining motionless and obeying all commands – even if it means the suspect gets away. Now, there are renewed calls for improved and more intense training for all officers, rookies and veterans.
Officer Edwards’ father, Ricardo, said something must be done so what happened to his son never happens again.
“If they can do that to their own people, who can they protect?” Ricardo Edwards said. “They are here to protect me, protect you, but if they can’t protect their own people, who they gonna protect?”
(Source: MyFoxNY / CBS2HD)
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2 Responses
Had the officer followed existing procedure he may not have gotten shot. He turned his gun towards the officer, did not remain motionless, and did not identify himself as a cop.
Anyone calling this a racist incident should be charged with a crime of some sort.
ny100k – Read the following exerpts from today’s NYT extensive article on this case – the issue is complex – not as simple as you would like them to be.
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“Its serried ranks are more diverse than ever, its training and rules on the use of force more rigorous than in the past, yet the New York Police Department still struggles with the problem of fraternal shootings across the color line.
Beginning with the first such shooting in 1940, when white officers in Harlem mistook a black officer, John A. Holt Jr., for a burglar and shot him dead in his own apartment building, these relatively rare shootings come attended by an air of political ritual: protesters march, panels are appointed and reforms are most often accepted by police commissioners.After a white officer shot and killed an undercover detective, William Capers, in 1972, the department drew up guidelines intended to prevent fraternal fire and undercover officers began wearing their badges on strings around their necks.
In 1994, after a white officer fired shots into the back of a black undercover transit officer, Desmond Robinson, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, acknowledged what seemed painfully obvious to black undercover officers – the department needed to appoint a panel to examine the racial assumptions of their white colleagues.”It’s a reality,” Mr. Bratton said. “Minority officers are at risk.”New York City has fewer fatal police shootings per officer than any other large police department in the nation, according to a department official. Since 1990, fewer than a half-dozen police officers have been shot by other officers in New York. And the Police Department has consistently tightened rules governing when and how officers should use firearms. But a 25-year-old police officer, Omar J. Edwards, now lies in a city morgue, and his death imposes its own reality. Anguish and tears come accompanied by questions about whether too many officers harbor too many assumptions and fire too quickly.
V”This is the most Shakespearean aspect of policing,” said State Senator Eric Adams of Brooklyn, who is black and a former police captain. “Your greatest fear is to be shot and slain on duty, and that’s only matched by your fear of shooting another officer.”He added, “If you speak with nine out of 10 officers of color they would tell you that when they hear sirens, in their head they are thinking: ‘I hope these cops know that I’m one of the good guys.’
“That worry comes embedded in a paradox: The New York Police Department never has been so diverse. A majority of the cadets in the last rookie police class were members of ethnic and racial minorities, offering a rainbow cross-section of the city itself. Over all, 47.8 percent of the city’s officers are white, 28.7 percent Hispanic, 17.9 percent black and 5.4 percent Asian.
But, replenished although this department is, its very youth and diversity present a challenge. Officer Edwards had been on the force for two years; the officer who shot him, Andrew P. Dunton, had been for 4 ½ years. Younger officers, say their instructors, are more likely to experience surges of judgment-blurring testosterone and adrenaline.In Officer Edwards’s case, the young, off-duty officer apparently had drawn his weapon and was chasing a man who had tried to break into his car when he encountered his on-duty colleagues, who according to their initial testimony saw his gun, shouted “Police!” and fired when he turned to face them.
Such actions might have been in violation of departmental protocols. “The department has very good training on use of force and firearm simulators,” said Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a specialist in the use of force. “The physiological impact on the officer is great. It’s very detrimental to solid judgment. Your adrenaline is pumping, and your visual skills are impaired.”It’s not a situation you can replicate in a classroom.”The city is a measurably safer place than it was two decades ago, when the number of homicides hovered around 2,000 each year. Last year, the city recorded 516 homicides. When former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani folded the transit and housing police forces into the New York Police Department in the mid-1990s, he eliminated much of the confusion that came with balkanized forces. But particularly for young officers, whose training comes in high-crime precincts, New York City can cast a confusing, even threatening shadow.Officers, many of whom grew up in segregated neighborhoods, find themselves challenged to remember daily that their own come in every shape and color.
“There was a time if you were a cop you could grab your gun and go into the streets and count on a stereotype to protect you,” said Eugene J. O’Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay and a former officer. “Now the cops look like everybody, and everybody looks like a cop.”So stereotypes,” he said, “offer no protection at all.”Sorting out the shooting of one officer by another, not least the role played by race, is complicated. In a few cases, gunman and victim share an ethnicity. In 2006, a gang brawled with an off-duty police officer, Eric Hernandez, at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx. Officer Alfredo Toro responded to a 911 call and shot Officer Hernandez, not realizing he was a colleague. Officer Hernandez later died.It “is naïve to assume that our department is driven by racism,” Dr. Haberfeld says. “Your experience will be based on what you encounter, and it’s natural to build up a profile.”But some black officers and academics counter that this is too easy. “If it was just a mistake, we would see more of these mistakes with officers of different colors,” said Prof. Delores Jones-Brown, director of John Jay’s Center on Race, Crime and Justice.Instinctual judgments about race and crime are woven into the culture of the streets.
“We tend to pretend in the police force that we don’t see race, we don’t see ethnicity, but we do,” said Senator Adams, the former police captain.
“One of my cops once said that if he sees a non-uniformed black man with a gun, he takes precautions for himself; if he sees a white guy with a gun, he takes precautions for both because he knows it could be a fellow cop.”Desmond Robinson lived this experience.
In 1994, in the confusion of the 53rd Street subway station, he chased a teenager with a gun. Another undercover officer, Peter Del-Debbio, who is white, came from the other direction and fired at Officer Robinson, the last few shots pumped into his back at close range.Officer Del-Debbio was convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to five years’ probation. Officer Robinson recovered and left the force.
“Everyone carries baggage subconsciously and retraining the mind takes lots of work,” said Mr. Robinson, who lives in Florida. “There are a lot of black undercovers out there, and officers need to understand that not every black man with a gun is a criminal.”