Blasted and busted
Bodycam footage of cops firing at ‘thief’
The NYPD has released bodycam footage of a police-involved shooting of a brazen suspected van thief in Brooklyn.
The footage shows a behind-the-gun view of three officers as they try to collar the suspect on the streets of East New York. The video was posted by the NYPD to YouTube early Saturday.
“Get out of the car! Get out of the car!” officers can be heard saying as they approach the suspect sitting in a white van.
Instead of complying, the man apparently hits the gas and speeds off, nearly clipping two cops banging on the driver’s side door in a bid to get him out, the video shows.
One of the officers, Keon Lawson, fires off five shots from his service Glock at the moving van, striking the 60-year-old driver, Paul Reed, in the leg, according to the footage.
“Shots fired! Shots fired!” the officers can be heard yelling into their radios as they continued to chase the fleeing van on foot.
The shooting happened on Jan. 6 at 8:54 p.m. on Georgia Avenue between Belmont Avenue and Pitkin Avenue in East New York, according to police.
The shooting remains under internal NYPD investigation.
Sgt. Carlos Nieves introduced the publicly released video clip, saying, “When a police officer uses force to take a person into custody or defend against an attack, the images can be graphic and sometimes difficult to watch.”
Struck in the calf, Reed was captured in a subsequent police pursuit, the NYPD said in the produced clip.
The footage came from the body cams of Lawson and Officers Joshua Ganshaw and Adrian Theobald. Such footage is now required to be made public in highprofile incidents under a 2020 City Hall directive.
Court records show Reed remains charged with felony possession of stolen property and reckless endangerment, along with misdemeanor unlawful fleeing of a police officer.