DETAILS OF FATAL INCIDENT REMAIN HAZY

>> NEW YORK: Two days after police officers in Brooklyn shot and killed a man holding a slim metal pipe as if it were a gun, the police offered the first information about the officers involved and released 911 call transcripts, though some details of what happened in the moments before the shooting remained hazy.

Several witnesses, including one who said on Friday that he tried getting the officers’ attention before they fired, have said they did not hear officers shout a warning or command before shooting. The police said on Friday that the officers repeatedly told the man: “Drop it”.

Officers from a plainclothes anti-crime unit responded late on Wednesday afternoon after seeing an alert on their smartphones for a gun incident; they called a dispatcher, who told them a 911 caller had reported that a man was pointing a gun at people, the police said.

The police said on Friday that it took five to 10 seconds from the moment officers pulled up to the corner of Montgomery Street and Utica Avenue to the moment they shot the man, Saheed Vassell. The department did not answer questions about how far the officers were from Vassell, or what exactly they did in those intervening seconds.

Security camera footage shows Vassell, 34, getting into a shooting stance and raising the pipe before the police shot him. The police said he was pointing it towards responding officers.

“These officers didn’t have much time,” the chief of detectives, Robert K Boyce, said on Friday. “When you’re presented with an immediate threat, it is different from being able to step back and talk.”

The police did not release any video of the officers getting out of their car or firing. Officials said the only security camera that captured the officers was almost a block away and did not show the incident in much detail. They said they were not releasing it because the department and the state attorney general’s office were still investigating the shooting.

Late Friday, the police released the first details about the four officers who fired at Vassell, who was black.

Three of the officers were from a plainclothes anti-crime unit in the 71st Precinct, the police said: a white officer with four years of experience; a white officer with six years of experience; and a black officer with five years of experience. They fired nine shots between them.

The fourth was a uniformed officer from the Strategic Response Group, which handles major events and hot spots of crime. He is Indian and has six years of experience, the police said. He fired once, the police said.

Another uniformed officer from the Strategic Response Group and a sergeant from the 71st Precinct were also at the scene, though neither fired their weapon.

The shooting of Vassell, who had bipolar disorder and was not taking medication, has set off protests in the Crown Heights neighbourhood and raised questions about the mental health services he received after previous encounters with the police, as well as whether the responding officers had any alternative to shooting him.

Police officers had previously taken Vassell to the hospital for psychiatric treatment multiple times, and residents of the area said many officers knew him, with some even occasionally buying him food. The police had given him 120 summonses over the years. The officers who first responded on Wednesday were from special units, however, and did not know him.