Cop-shoot vid
Slay of Bx. knife-wielder is first filmed with body cams
A MAN wielding a knife and a fake gun was killed by cops in the Bronx on Wednesday — the first such shooting captured on official NYPD body cameras, according to police.
Cops responded to an Edenwald home around 4 p.m. after a landlord called 911, concerned that he hadn’t seen one of his tenants in a long time.
A pair of officers climbed to the top floor of the three-story Pratt Ave. home, and the landlord let them into the apartment.
Once inside, the 31-year-old tenant, a knife in his left hand, confronted them, said NYPD Chief of Department Carlos Gomez.
The man’s other hand was hidden behind his back.
“They were telling him, ‘Drop the knife, drop the knife,’ ‘Come outside with your hands up,’ But he never did,” downstairs neighbor Lawrence Thompson, 58, told the Daily News. “They were there so long telling him to drop the knife and come out.”
Gomez said the cops quickly noticed what appeared to be a gun in the man’s right hand.
“The officers asked the male if the gun was real and ordered him to drop it, explaining and adding, ‘We don’t want to hurt you,’ ” Gomez said.
After negotiating with the man for more than an hour, backup including an officer with a stun gun arrived.The man refused to respond to the officers’ pleas.
Instead, he raised his right hand, aiming what looked like a silver pistol at the cops.
“One officer fired his Taser as the two other officers fired their service weapons, striking the subject several times,” Gomez said.
Police recovered the knife and a toy gun (photo) with a red laser pointer attached.
The entire incident was caught on video by four separate body cameras, Gomez said. The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request to release the footage Wednesday night.
The NYPD started equipping cops with the technology in April as part of a pilot program, after a federal judge in 2013 found that the city’s use of stop-and-frisk tactics was unconstitutional.
The department expects to expand to 5,000 cameras through 2018, and about 22,000 by the end of 2019.
The NYPD hasn’t decided whether it will allow the footage to be used in lawsuits, and whether the footage will be made public.
City Councilwoman Vanessa Gibson (D-Bronx), who heads the Council’s Public Safety Committee, referred to the cameras as “neutral observers” Wednesday night.
“Obviously, looking at that recording and that footage will give the department and the public a better idea of what happened,” she said. “We definitely will have a better understanding of what happened and how this individual ended up dead.”