Off-duty black St. Louis cop mistakenly shot by white cop

ST. LOUIS — An off-duty black St. Louis police officer’s race factored into him being mistakenly shot by a white officer who didn’t recognize him during a shootout with black suspects last week, the wounded officer’s lawyer contends.

The 38-year-old black officer was off duty when he heard a commotion near his home and ran toward it with his service weapon to try to help his fellow officers, police said.

St. Louis’ interim police chief, Lawrence O’Toole, said the incident began when officers with an anti-crime task force followed a stolen car and were twice fired upon by its occupants. One suspect was shot in the ankle and was arrested, along with another teenager who tried to run from police, O’Toole said. A third suspect is being sought.

When the off-duty officer who lived nearby heard the commotion and arrived at the scene to help, two on-duty officers ordered him to the ground but then recognized him and told him to stand up and walk toward them. As he was doing so, another officer arrived and shot the off-duty officer “apparently not recognizing” him, police said.

The police department had not disclosed the names of the officers as of Saturday. It described the black officer as an 11-year department veteran and said he was treated at a hospital and released. The officer who shot him is 36 years old and has been with the department more than eight years.

The black officer’s lawyer, Rufus J. Tate Jr., discussed the shooting with St. Louis Fox affiliate KTVI , but the officer isn’t named in that report. Tate did not reply to several phone messages seeking comment.

Tate told the station his client identified himself to the on-duty officers at the scene and complied with their commands. He questioned the white officer’s claim that, according to police, he shot the off-duty officer because he feared for his safety.

“In the police report you have so far, there is no description of a threat he received. So we have a real problem with that. But this has been a national discussion York City police Officer Omar J. Edwards, who was black, was shot and killed by a white officer on a Harlem street while in street clothes. He had just finished his shift, and had his service weapon out, chasing a man who had broken into his car, police said.

Three plainclothes officers on routine patrol arrived at the scene and yelled for the two to stop, police said. One officer, Andrew Dunton, opened fire and hit Edwards three times as he turned toward them with his service weapon. It wasn’t until medical workers were on scene that it was determined he was a police officer. A grand jury voted not to indict Dunton.

A year earlier in the suburb of White Plains, N.Y., a black off-duty Mount Vernon police officer was killed by a Westchester County officer while holding an assault suspect at gunpoint.

And in Providence, R.I., in 2000 an off-duty black police sergeant, Cornel Young Jr. was accidentally killed by two uniformed white colleagues while he was trying to break up a fight in a parking lot.