Brass: We’ll ID officers who killed bipolar man

THE NYPD will name the officers involved in the fatal shooting earlier this month of a bipolar Brooklyn man who was waving a pipe as if it were a gun. But cops couldn’t say when. Newly appointed Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea, who made the announcement Wednesday on “Good Day New York,” said there was no firm date set to release the information.

“At some point, the names will be released. But we’re going to wait for the (investigation) to go a little bit further,” Shea said.

Saheed Vassell, 34, was off his psych meds when four police officers shot him April 4 in Crown Heights. The unhinged man pointed a shiny metal object at police — which was later identified as a piece of a soldering torch — in a confrontation that lasted less than 10 seconds, authorities said.

Cops were responding to worried 911 callers who saw Vassell clutching the piece of metal while walking along the street and confronting random pedestrians as if he had a gun. Since the killing, there have been repeated demands to identify the officers involved in Vassell’s death.

Shea, the former head of the NYPD’s crime control strategies division who took over from retiring Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce this week, doesn’t believe releasing the names will fan any tensions between police and residents of Crown Heights — but he hinted there are concerns of reprisals against the officers involved.

“There is always going to be tensions at times,” he said. “There are safety concerns that we balance for the officers and the officers’ families.”

The NYPD’s Force Investigations Division is investigating the shooting.

“It’s been several weeks, but these investigations are done with painstaking attention to detail,” Shea, 48, said. “(It’s) a long investigation, but it is somewhat still in the preliminary stages.”