Looking at police, eyes wide open

Within 10 seconds of the jumpout, four special unit cops roaming the city to protect us from guns and terror had shot 10 times at Saheed Vassell, and nine bullets had struck his body. The 34-year-old father — well known to the neighborhood’s residents and beat cops as a bipolar but decent neighborhood character — went down late Wednesday afternoon on Utica Ave., just off the corner of Montgomery St., in Crown Heights.

Thursday, hours after Mayor de Blasio said, “We are going to be as transparent as we can,” the NYPD released a video with brief clips of Vassell menacing pedestrians with a metal pipe he held like a gun, along with text from 911 callers and a dispatcher reporting a man with a gun. The video didn’t show the police, though witnesses told The News that officers — none of whom have been publicly named — got out of their vehicle and, seeing a man in a firing pose, began shooting without a word.

Later Thursday came the leak of Vassell’s criminal record, as though to say “no choirboy, this one.” And Friday afternoon, a new video with less editing and some of the same footage. “As transparent as we can” looks a lot like trickling out exculpatory material to fend off bad headlines and rising public anger.

After Vassell’s off-camera encounter with the NYPD, an ambulance arrived to take him a few blocks away to Kings County Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

A precinct and a neighborhood away in Park Slope, I happened to be in the ER waiting room of New York Methodist with no idea there had been a shooting in Crown Heights about an hour earlier. I was reading Michael Daly’s 1995 novel “Underground” and waiting for an electrocardiogram. “SIEGEL!” I put the book away and walked where the hospital staffer was pointing, to the door marked “triage.” Opened it to see a small corridor packed with with two dozen or so cops standing around — commanders in white shirts and detectives in stylish jackets and plainclothes officers with their badges out and uniformed officers with Strategic Response Group patches, one of them talking to an off-duty cop in civilian clothes who was saying she’d come straight there from her nearby apartment.

An officer in a community affairs jacket was standing by himself in a corner. No one there but NYPD, hospital workers and me.

People looked up as I came in, and the voices in the room quieted down. After a couple minutes of failing to pick up on much of what was being said, or why they were there, I took a seat and resumed reading Daly’s novel about Jack Swann, a stand-in for his friend Jack Maple, the onetime transit cop who resolved to do the job the right way and ended up transforming policing in New York for the better.

I read the end of the opening section, as Swann leaves his underground post, follows a mugging crew on the hunt for a victim and ends up in a life-or-death struggle for his gun with a teenage boy from that crew in the middle of Times Square. He ends up shooting the boy, who later dies in the hospital.

Just after the struggle is a small display of how cops in tight spots can end up protecting and serving themselves.

Right after Swann has shot the kid, his partner catches up to him and asks: “So, what’s the story?”

He’s not asking what happened, but what they’re going to tell their bosses.

Another cop, Mannering, races over from his post and asks: “Do we want witnesses, Jack?”

A sergeant arrives next and asks: “What happened?”

Swann replies: “He tried to get my gun andI...”

Mannering takes Swann’s arm, and interrupts: “Hold on, Sarge, this officer is hurt and he’s going to the hospital.” . . . “I’m okay,” Swann said. The sergeant was left standing there as Mannering led Swann over to a squad car.

“It’s always better if you’re hurt,” Mannering said.

I looked up from the book to the triage room, and finally asked the nearest officer what they were doing here.

“You’ll see it on the news at 11,” he said, and turned away.

So I went on Twitter and found the early reports about what happened in Crown Heights as the officers stood around the triage room and talked quietly about the story and whatever else, while their colleagues were examined for any injuries they may have suffered in the course of shooting and killing a man. Again, “SIEGEL!” I went through a door to get my ECG, then back through the triage area and its gaggle of cops on my way to the ER.

Walking out, I heard a commander talking to someone from the hospital: “Don’t worry. The press doesn’t know we’re here.”