Four people were injured Sunday afternoon at a Brooklyn subway stop in what started as officers’ attempts to apprehend a man accused of skipping the station turnstile.
NYPD brass said the alleged fare-beater had charged at the officers with a knife and made verbal threats against their lives; he was last said to be in critical condition, along with one of the bystanders
Yeah, that may have been how it started.
Body-worn camera footage, which Maddrey said he reviewed before the press conference, allegedly showed the man make a verbal threat to the officers. He told the cops, "I'm going to kill you if you don't stop following me," the chief said.
Definitely sounds like the police at fault, and the guy wasn't a walking time bomb or anything.
I get that the situation with the police in the US is cooked, but saying this was over a $2 fare isn't really being honest about the situation.
I mean, for discharging your firearm in an enclosed space with tons of people around? Yeah, I definitely would consider the police at fault. Should the guy with the knife have been persued once it was revealed he was armed? Sure, I can accept that. But what I do not accept is that the police seem to, despite the absurd modern toolkit at their disposal, only have two tools they actually use: their taser and their gun.
Why is it that seemingly anywhere else a knife-wielding assailant can be subdued without blood being drawn, but here it results in several people suffering life threatening injuries and one dead?
Except there is no evidence of a knife outside of the police story, bystanders say there was no knife and to my knowledge they still haven't found a knife
The cops weren’t absolute monsters that shoot first and ask questions never
Simple cause and effect, coupled with pre-existing fear of cops because of the multitude of times they’ve shot a person dead over nothing, or kneeled on their neck until they were dead over cigarettes.
Maddrey said the officers followed the man, each firing a Taser which proved ineffective in subduing the man. He then exited the train while it was still at the station and charged the officers with the knife, the chief said.
Yes, firing a gun in a crowded subway station is absolutely in the wrong, as we can see by the three innocent people shot, one in the head. There are police forces across the world trained to deal with assailants with deadly weapons including knives without shooting them. It’s reasonable to expect the NYPD to have the same level of training and judgement.
Literally every other police force in the world could handle some untrained bloke with a pocket knife, ditto for a pair. They do it every day.
But no, the solution here is to never have a system in place where the people catching fare jumpers are the same mentally unstable domestic abusers who are given a carte blanche to kill anyone who does anything less than kiss the ground they walk on
He is some reading material on why people hate the NYPD so much. We don't want wrestling matches but shooting someone in the head for $2 is just plan bad. Don't worry there are a lot more examples if you like.
Sometimes the police from the USA go to Europe to learn how to handle these situations without murder. And European police sometimes go to the USA to learn how to handle gun situations.
This would not have happened anywhere outside of the USA, not even in dangerous countries. Just my 2c
I'm from New Zealand, our police shoot people with knives occasionally. I'm not convinced this would have ended differently here, or any other country.
A knife is an incredibly dangerous weapon, and the alternative solutions being proposed here just aren't realistic.
The man catcher poles thing was pretty funny though.
OR MAYBE DON'T FUCKING STALK AND THREATEN SOMEONE OVER 3 FUCKIN DOLLARS.
MAYBE DON'T BE THE PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE MORE FEAR THAN ANYONE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY AND PEOPLE WON'T BE IN FIGHT OR FLIGHT MODE AROUND YOU.
Do you think that guy just goes around running at anyone with knives, or just the people who got paid $50m to bully the population over a $200k deficit?
This is a police manufactured problem. Attack the source to solve it.
If train stations stocked japanese man-catcher poles (sasumata) they could easily subdue a knife wielding suspect with zero risk to themselves and bystanders. No one is saying go toe to toe with a knife wielding person.
Ya, zero risk to everything once you get 7 or 8 police wielding them at the same time, per one violent person, in a crowded subway with potentially no walls to pin them down to, with the extreme possibility of someone just pulling a gun on you when you have both your hands occupied with a stick. Mancatchers work great on gifs and videos, but suck in the actual world. Especially when you get charged by a dude wielding a knife. You'll 100% have the time to "break the glass in an emergency" and to deal with said person. Especially when the situation turns from "let's run after this guy that skipped the fare" into "holy shit that's a knife and I'm going to die".