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On Friday, a New York City police officer shot and seriously injured a man. Authorities said the man was in emotional distress and had a pair of scissors and he had a 12-inch kitchen knife.
Officials said the incident occurred after police responded to a 911 call. When the police arrived, a man with scissors and a knife ran towards them, then another man who was standing nearby.
The policeman told the man to drop the scissors, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned and sprinted towards one of the officers, who fired three shots and hit the man twice.
“The situation was rapid, volatile and dangerous,” said John Chell, chief of patrol at the police station. at a press conference“We have stopped the threat to this community.”
The encounter was captured by a camera worn on the officer’s body, and Chief Chell said police officials saw the footage but did not release it for review. The man, who was not identified, was taken to hospital for treatment.
Chief Chell said police officials believed the man came from the facility and that he “had four arrests in our department and a documented psychiatric history.”
New York City public advocate Jummaan Williams said in an interview that he hoped footage of the encounter would be “released sooner or later,” questioning whether the man had received proper mental health services. watched.
Williams said he expects a new approach to handling such calls that doesn’t involve police responding first, “even if scissors are involved.”
“If the police or law enforcement are needed, they can be called at any time, but the problem seems to arise when they are first called,” he said.
In the Bronx, the shooting came less than a month after officers shot another man who was in emotional distress and had a knife. In that case, a police officer shot a man, Mr. Raul de la Cruz, within 28 seconds of him responding to his 311 call from Mr. de la Cruz’s father. Young de la Cruz remained unconscious for days after the shooting.
Malinda Van Daren, Senior Staff Attorney for the New York Bar Association for the Public Interest, representing the de la Cruz family, said: Ms. Van Darren said the shooting shows that “New York City needs more than the police,” she said.
The use of police officers to respond to calls involving people experiencing mental health crises is subject to scrutiny in New York and elsewhere across the country due to the high frequency of such encounters being fatal. It has been.
In 2019, police shot dead a Bronx fitness instructor who was struggling with mental health issues in New York City. Officers involved in the shooting face disciplinary trial next week. Cops also shot and killed a man known to be mentally ill in 2018.
Tensions can escalate quickly when police officers respond to calls from people in distress with sirens and flashing lights, surround them and make demands, Van Daren said.
“There are alternatives and they work in other communities,” she said.
A relatively new program in New Jersey aims to prevent such encounters from becoming fatal by pairing police officers with certified mental health screeners.
But in New York City, police officers are often the first to respond to people in distress. In 2021, police said he handled just over 171,000 calls, compared to about 158,000 calls in 2021, according to department data.
Friday’s shooting was the latest in several recent police shootings, including three on April 13 alone. The shooting that day involved an armed man at a Bronx subway station. The man who stabbed a security guard in Queens. And a 78-year-old Brooklyn man said his nephew called the police and thought there was a burglar at his uncle’s house, in which the man was shot dead.
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