Police release images to counter shooting uproar

NEW YORK — Police seeking to quell simmering anger over their shooting of a mentally disturbed black man on a New York City street released a montage of security videos Thursday that showed him minutes earlier thrusting a metal object that looked like a gun into the faces of several people — including a woman holding the hand of her child.

A final video snippet showed the man raising the object in a two-handed shooting stance as police arrived, the edited video frozen just before officers unleashed 10 shots that left 34-year-old Saheed Vassell dead. His weapon turned out to be nothing more than an L-shaped section of pipe.

The shooting in Brooklyn on Wednesday evening prompted two nights of protests among many who felt police should have known that Vassell, a fixture in the Crown Heights neighborhood, had emotional problems.

But Mayor Bill De Blasio didn’t lay blame on the officers, who were not from the local precinct and were This surveillance-video image shows Saheed Vassell brandishing a metal object at the scene in Brooklyn where officers fatally shot him after he was reported to be threatening people with a gun. The “gun” turned out to be a metal pipe that police mistook for a firearm. Vassell, who had mental-health problems, was shot 10 times. His death has prompted a public outcry.

passing through at the time. He said they had no information that the person they were confronting was mentally ill.

“It’s a tragedy because a man with a profound mentalhealth problem ... was doing something that people perceived to be a threat to the safety of others,” de Blasio said at a news conference shortly before the images and a partial transcript of 911 calls were released.

“What we have seen from the images that are publicly available, people in the community thought he had a weapon and was aiming it at residents,” the mayor said. “That’s the kind of calls, multiple calls, that NYPD received.”

According to the transcripts, one caller to 911 reported that Vassell “looks like he’s crazy but he’s pointing something at people that looks like a gun.”

“Where is the gun?” a dispatcher asked one caller. “His hand,” the caller replied.

In police radio traffic posted online, dispatchers directing officers to the scene said 911 callers were reporting only that a person was pointing a gun at people. After the shooting, the officers can be heard frantically calling for dispatchers to send an ambulance.

The release of the edited material on

the New York Police Department’s Twitter account — the full videos and transcripts weren’t immediately provided — was meant to back up claims by the police department that the four plainclothes and two uniformed officers who responded had a legitimate reason to believe they needed to move swiftly to stop a deadly threat.

The material released by the department didn’t answer questions about whether the officers had identified themselves or ordered the victim to drop the object before they opened fire. The city’s medical examiner found he was hit seven to nine times, including one shot to the head.

At a vigil Thursday night, Vassell’s mother, Lorna, said her son “came from a good home” and that he was not homeless.

Vassell’s father, Eric, told reporters that his son had been hospitalized several times for psychiatric problems, some involving encounters with the police, but that he was polite and kind.

“Police had a choice. They always have a choice. They should not train them to kill. They should train them to protect life, to save life,” Eric Vassell said in an interview with WABC-TV.