The NYPD is investigating the chaos that unfolded after police opened fire at a subway station, leaving an officer, a suspect and two innocent bystanders shot. It happened shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday at the L Train platform at Van Sinderen and Sutter avenues in Brownsville. It started when police say the two officers followed a 37-year-old man up the stairs who hadn't paid his fare." The officers are asking him to stop. The male is refusing to stop at a certain point on the platform. The male, he mutters the words, 'I'm going to kill you if you don't stop following me,'" said NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey. That verbal threat became a physical one as the suspect pulled a knife from his pocket. Officers told the man to drop the weapon but the suspect told officers they would have to shoot him, Maddrey said.

The confrontation moved inside a train that had just pulled into the station and that's where police opened fire after tasering the suspect didn't work. The bullets that flew inside the car and onto the platform struck the suspect and two passengers - a 26-year-old woman and a 49-year-old man - as well as a 40-year-old officer. On Monday, the shot officer remained hospitalized at Brookdale University Hospital. It is unclear if the officer was hit by a bullet or fragment that came from his partner's gun. The 37-year-old suspect remains in critical condition at Kings County Hospital. The 49-year-old male bystander struck in the head is in critical condition and the 26-year-old woman, also a bystander, was grazed in the leg by a bullet and is stable.

An NYPD official estimated the suspect was about seven feet from the NYPD officers at the time they opened fire, well within their "zone of safety" of 21 feet. The NYPD Force Investigation Division will investigate. Several videos circulating on social media and internally in the police department show chaos as subway riders rush on the elevated subway platform to get away from the gunfire. Former NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said he believes police bodycam video will tell the whole story. "The tactics are a little bit different in the subways, you have to understand , it's a very condensed environment with a lot of people," Boyce said. "People are carrying weapons onto the subway system and it has to be dealt with, but you act within your tactics and your instincts and your training and that's where this goes."

So in, you know, a few hours after the shooting, police officials got on stage at a news conference and said that police had not only shot Mickles [guy who didn't pay fare] but also shot two bystanders, a 49-year-old man in the head - that man is in critical condition - and grazed a 26-year-old woman. She's luckily in stable condition. They also shot a fellow police officer. Luckily, he's also in stable condition.

We actually got video of the aftermath of the shooting. It's been sort of floating around on social media. In the video, you can see at least two men lying inside two separate train cars. So we're asking questions. You know, why did enforcing fare evasion result in four people getting shot, including a police officer? How exactly did this play out, and why were two people shot in two separate train cars?

You know, policing the subways and policing fare evasion has been a huge focus for New York City mayor Eric Adams and the police department. They've spent over 150 million more dollars on officer overtime. They've flooded the transit system with over a thousand more cops every day. Police are issuing tens of thousands more criminal summons than they used to for people who don't pay their subway fare under our mayor and are making more arrests.

Actually, earlier this year, I analyzed data from every single subway station in New York City and found that at one station in Brooklyn - actually, the station right next to where this shooting took place - you're 40 times more likely to get arrested for not paying your ticket than the average station.

sikacz wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:33 am Sometimes trying to stop a fare jumper shouldn’t lead to shots fired. Perhaps they should have let him go and alerted other stations.

BearPaws wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2024 6:20 pm Cops are terrible shooters, in the main, and many of them have zero business handling firearms.

BearPaws wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2024 9:52 pm You may be right, Ylatkit!

I keep thinking of a couple of events.

One is the Miramar Shooting, during which at least one cop fired into the solid metal side of a UPS delivery vehicle. What was the target? The UPS driver was inside that box, how did the cop know he wouldn't hit the UPS driver, or did that even matter? The vehicle had GPS tracking, so it wasn't like they couldn't find a better place to set up an ambush. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Miramar_shootout

The other is closer to home. During the no-knock raid in which LMPD thugs killed Breonna Taylor (about ten miles from where I'm sitting as I type this), Brett Hankison dumped a mag through a patio door with curtains drawn behind it, thinking (using that term very loosely) he was firing at muzzle flashes from a gun pointed outward. Three of his rounds entered the apartment upstairs from Taylor's. Hankison was charged with endangering the neighbor. Side note: Hankison had done some off-duty "security" work at a tavern in a suburb, and faced a couple of complaints from women who said he imposed himself on them (SA).

If this country isn't going to defund the police, we must at the very least disarm them.

CowboyT wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 2:31 pm
It's not that we should defund the police. I've never believed in that. Rather, what we should do is *prosecute* the bad actors in the police department, the same way that you and I would be prosecuted were we to shoot people. This notion of "qualified immunity" really needs revamping, because it's much, much more difficult--in many cases, almost impossible--to get a conviction against a bad-actor police officer than a bad-actor who isn't a cop.

Also, it goes to who is allowed into the police academies and who precincts recruit. If there's any evidence of "aggressive personality", i. e. tends to display aggression, that should be an automatic disqualifier for the police forces. You want to be aggressive, there's a place for that, and it's called the Infantry or Special Forces, i. e. you're fighting against either invading foreign troops or you're sent to an overseas battlefield. The police are not the Army (or any other component of the DoD) and should not be treated or trained as such.

CowboyT wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 2:31 pm

Also, it goes to who is allowed into the police academies and who precincts recruit. If there's any evidence of "aggressive personality", i. e. tends to display aggression, that should be an automatic disqualifier for the police forces. You want to be aggressive, there's a place for that, and it's called the Infantry or Special Forces, i. e. you're fighting against either invading foreign troops or you're sent to an overseas battlefield. The police are not the Army (or any other component of the DoD) and should not be treated or trained as such.

Newly released video footage of New York City police officers opening fire on a knife-wielding man at a Brooklyn subway station did not quell anger over their inadvertent shooting of two bystanders, including one who was hit in the head during the burst of gunfire. The police made the edited, 17-minute video public on Friday amid substantial criticism of the shooting. The graphic footage, captured by cameras worn by the two officers and other cameras in the station and on a subway car, shows a confrontation that began with a man entering the system without paying and two officers forcing him to leave. That initial encounter ended with the man, Derrell Mickles, going out through the turnstile while holding what appears to be an open folding knife in his right hand while the officers follow him at a short distance, the video shows. A second encounter that began about 10 minutes later ended with Mr. Mickles, an officer and the two bystanders wounded.

The shooting, at the Sutter Avenue L station last Sunday, is being examined by the Police Department’s Force Investigation Division and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. Police leaders and Mayor Eric Adams have said the shooting was justified under the department’s rules because Mr. Mickles had a weapon and threatened the officers with it. But critics have accused the police of overreacting in a dangerous way and escalating what began as the enforcement of the minor offense of fare evasion into unnecessary violence. The events that led to the shooting began at around 3 p.m. with Mr. Mickle’s first attempt at evading the fare, the footage shows. Two officers, Edmund Mays and Alex Wong, follow him into the station, and he leaves moments later with what appears to be a knife in his hand, the footage shows. (Just after he jumps the turnstile, two other people are seen entering without paying.)

Police officials have said that the officers asked him to leave, that he complied and that it was in connection with this interaction that they became aware he had the knife. The footage released on Friday does not make it clear when they made that realization. Minutes later, the footage shows, Mr. Mickles returns to the station, lingering near the emergency gate briefly before walking through it as someone comes out. The officers follow him through the gate and up the stairs to the platform. As he and Officer Wong follow Mr. Mickles down a narrow, nearly empty platform, they ask him repeatedly to drop the knife, which he appears to have in his right hand. He is combative, telling them to leave him alone while quickening his pace at times as the officers try to keep up. He continues to ignore their repeated commands, saying he will not drop the knife and challenging them more than once to shoot him.

An L train pulls into the elevated station, and Mr. Mickles backs away from the officers and onto one of the cars. They follow him and demand again that he drop the knife as several passengers look on. When he continues to refuse, they fire their Tasers. The devices fail to subdue him, and he leaves the car onto the platform while pulling Taser prongs out of his shirt. The footage shows Mr. Mickles rushing down the platform toward Officer Mays before stopping and turning to face Officer Wong. He appears to be standing still when the two officers begin firing, the video shows. Officer Wong fired six shots, and Officer Mays fired three, the video says. Mr. Mickles stumbles toward an open train car and falls in with the knife still in his hand, the footage shows. Shouts can be heard from people sitting in the car as they run. “I’m shot, I’m shot,” Officer Mays yells, his gun still extended. He and Officer Wong continue to yell at Mr. Mickles to drop the knife. An officer kicks it away, and another man can be seen picking it up. (The police said they recovered it later.) John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, defended the officers’ actions at a news conference on Wednesday. He said they had followed department guidelines, which allow the use of deadly force when officers believe their lives or the lives of others are in danger.

Ylatkit wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2024 11:56 pm I have never met an SPD officer, or a King County, Pierce County, Snohomish County, Tribal or State cop who was a thug. I don't think I've ever actually met any federal officers. If I did, I didn't know it.

I did meet one King County Jail dude I had questions about, but he ate his gun.

BearPaws wrote: Sat Sep 21, 2024 8:53 pm In any event, there are enough thugs who have sought out jobs as cops that it's reasonable for me to assume that ANY cop I encounter is going to be a problem, and record accordingly.