Police opened fire on a subway platform in Brooklyn during a confrontation with an alleged fare-beater, striking the man cops said was armed with a knife, two straphangers caught in the fray, and one of the firing officers, NYPD officials said Sunday.
One of those two passengers hit by the cops’ bullets, a 49-year-old man, was hospitalized in critical condition after he was hit struck in the head, according to the NYPD.
The two officers who opened fire were assigned to patrol the Sutter Avenue subway stop in the 73rd precinct when they spotted a man skip the station turnstile and walk through an open gate toward the train platform, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey explained at an evening press conference from Brookdale Hospital.
NYPD goes HARD on toll jumpers, but there’s virtually zero enforcement on traffic and cars. Everywhere I go I see assholes with illegally modified vehicles, degenerates speeding down shoulders and medians, motorcycles on crowded sidewalks and pedestrian paths, and too many drunk drivers to count. There are so many cases where one pig parked on the shoulder during rush hour would fund the city budget for a year.
Instead we get whole families of pigs loitering by the turnstiles
Clearly that’s where the money is. $2.90 goes hard
Who drives and who uses the subway.
That’s your answer.
Apparently we’re calling commuters “straphangers” now too. I wonder if the NYPD will shoot at speeding wheelgrippers next.
The subways used to have straps on the bars to hold on to during the ride. They’ve been called straphangers for a very long time. In the 80’s one of my brothers was part of the Straphangers Campaign.
Fair enough, my ignorance/age is showing.
I’ve taken public transit all my life so I understood what it meant. Never heard the term in Canada before though.
I think it’s a NYC thing so don’t feel bad
So now can we call them “pole hangers”? “Pole grabbers”? “Pole holders”? If they’re listening to music and swaying in time, perhaps “pole dancers”?
I’m sure there are better terms but I’m not very creative.
I was wondering what that word meant. Thanks for the context.
Once I was in NYC and saw a little pack of motorcycles doing wheelies and running red lights.
Sounds like a lovely Tuesday afternoon
The reason is the same reason why bullies go after vulnerable and/or isolated kids. The type of person who has a car and has the money and means to illegally modify it is also the type of person who would give the police absolute hell if they so much as dared to look at them the wrong way. A person jumping a small toll is someone who is poor and will never attract the sympathies of any judge who will treat them very harshly.
Yeah I just can’t help but think of all that sweet sweet money that we absolutely used to get by charging the rich assholes being bad with their fancy toy cars to the point of it being the main funding force for police for decades and wonder…
Why not take?
I want that. I really do. The major problem is that throughout most of history the wealthy have always gotten away with the most incredibly blatant shit and the general attitude of the legal system has been to comfort the comfortable and grieve the aggrieved. The times where the people on the top got their comeuppance and where the wealthy were forced to comply with some level of propriety towards the average person are both rare and brief.
In the US, the New Deal era was by far the most prosperous era in US history, and many of the wealthy people HATED it. The whole modern anti-politics as politics started shortly after WW2 as a response to the whole thing. The video I linked has more information on it… and it is far from the whole story. What I am saying is that it is really fucked just how powerful the propaganda apparatus of capitalism has grown. This isn’t to say that it was somehow unbiased in the past. Prior to WW2 the liberal media basically aided fascists gain power even when fascists were killing many of the same liberal journalists and shutting down their newspapers.
It isn’t impossible. It is just fucked is what I am saying, and things will get a lot worse before things get better… and the sad reality is any recovery will be very brief since that is the way how humans work.
Fuck cars!
Easy friend. That’s for dragons.
Sigh… nobody has brought over that community yet.
Dragons fucking cars? Or cars fucking dragons?
Yes.
The NYPD also loves to go after jaywalkers and vagrants, particularly when they’re interfering with the flow of street traffic.
Cars are King, baby.
I totally agree about the vagrancy thing. I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking but I only lived there for 50 years.
I have never seen nor heard of anyone in NYC getting a ticket for jaywalking
I had a friend who got grabbed by a police officer and thrown against a wall by a NYPD officer, then arrested on the spot, for crossing outside of a designated crosswalk.
But that was during OWS, so maybe a few other political winds were involved.
That’s totally fucked up. Sounds like they were looking for an excuse to beat someone.
Cops? looking for an excuse to beat someone? Never!
Such a reaction is insane, in other countries they would be prosecuted, right?
In other countries they’d just put in fare gates you couldn’t jump.
We don’t even have gates. Most people just pay for their tickets. Sometimes there are ticket inspections - if you get caught you’ll be fined. Way cheaper than enormous infrastructure for every entrance that just slows you down if you have an annual ticket for example. https://youtu.be/kq-X25pH1XQ
Based
I hope the cop that got shot is hurting. Stupid fucks
Definitely sitting at home, getting paid leave and talking to his union provided lawyer and was told not to say anything by his coworkers who didn’t arrest him for shooting multiple people.
This is like an unfunny onion article. The fact that there can be civilian casualties in NYPDs war on fare jumpers is just shameful. It’s not for the money. They spend $150 million a year to recover $100k. Beyond an embarrassment.
Why hasn’t the city released the full body cam footage?
Probably because there was no knife in the footage.
Comments like these are all over the thread…
There’s a still image of the police body cam footage here which shows the knife: https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-shooting-sutter-ave-subway-station-brooklyn/
Sorry but I’m not going to take the city or cops at their word because we’ve seen multiple similar incidents in the past where they spun their story then when forced to release the footage it’s a completely different story.
I’m responding to a comment that said there was no knife in the footage.
I linked a still of the footage showing a knife.
But we know whether there was a knife or not isn’t what you or most people on Lemmy care about. You don’t like cops so therefore they were wrong. Facts be damned.
You’re right that a still image of a knife matters little to me, I understand you were responding to a post specifically about a knife being present, and I’m adding that whether a knife is present or not doesn’t change the fact that the city and police are releasing statements and withholding evidence to manipulate public opinion. Why should I have to trust the cops at all if there is video evidence of the events that I can use to form my own judgements from? Why hide the facts from public view?
Fair enough. However, they should release the footage regardless. Especially since 4 people got shot, 2 of which were bystanders, and that this was over a cheap fare. Cops are pretty untrustworthy.
However, they should release the footage regardless.
100% agree.
Since when are stills taken from video that clear? Especially during a scuffle, and with questionable lighting… Something doesn’t add up.
There’s no arguing with you if there’s no sources you believe.
You could say the same if I linked the whole damn video.
Can you?
While they’re being excessively conspiratorial (For fuck’s sake, stills from an uncompressed video are that clear), that image doesn’t tell us anything. We don’t know who the person in that image even was, and it could just as easily have been a bystander, the alleged fare jumper or the cop who got shot that was wearing plain clothes. They could easily answer this question by just releasing the bodycam footage, but they haven’t done that, and time and time again we’ve seen the NYPD refuse to release any of the footage except some juicy still images to cover up gross misconduct of an officer. Personally I doubt this is the case, but the time when I could blindly accept that has long passed.
that image doesn’t tell us anything.
The comment I responded to says,
Probably because there was no knife in the footage.
So, I provided a still of the footage showing a knife.
Sure, we don’t know for sure who it is but I have a pretty good guess.
I too await the full footage.
In the most pedantic and exacting way, you might be right!
The topic here (and my original point) is that the image you’ve linked doesn’t tell us anything except that the NYPD have claimed it’s a still from the bodycam footage. We don’t have any of the context it occurs within, so while yes that is an image of a knife, we don’t actually know that it’s a still taken from bodycam footage of the incident. The original poster’s point was that at the time we didn’t (and as of writing, still don’t) have any evidence that they aren’t just making shit up. We still don’t. And as much as I’d love for the NYPD not to be pulling the same bullshit they always always try to pull, we have no reason to believe that right now. They have earned zero of the credibility you’re affording them.
And, really, a personal appeal: Is it a reasonable use of your time to try and nickle-and-dime the issue until an incident where the NYPD escalated a $2.90 situation to the point that two innocent bystanders were shot somehow becomes palatable? Who cares if he had a knife, even according to them he did not pose a present threat until he was provoked. The NYPD is a goddamn army with the most advanced surveillance system in the entire world and that dude was on a train. They absolutely could have just mailed the ticket to his house like they do with 90% of farejumpers, or if they wanted to be bastards, they could have followed him via surveillance, isolated and then arrested him safely elsewhere. They do that all the time in other cities. Engaging a potentially violent subject on a fucking subway train is beyond inexcusable no matter what the guy did, because while he’s a shithead for (in all likelihood) trying to stab the cops, the cops should not have allowed themselves to be in that situation in the first place. It’s basic shit, volunteers at comic-con can do it, why can’t these inept SOBs?
“We will be working through the timeline of today, but make no mistake, the events that occurred on the Sutter Avenue station platform are the results of an armed perpetrator who was confronted by our officers doing the job we asked them to do," Donlon said.
Could we maybe not ask police officers to escalate minor and petty conflicts all the way up to shooting everyone in the immediate vicinity?
doing the job we asked them to do
Ah, so we should pursue this ‘we’ who are asking cops to kill innocent people. Thanks, Donlon!
“armed perpetrator” ah, so any american that commits a crime, then?
Imagine the 2 by standards suing the department getting and 6 million dollars. Because shooting a guy for jumping a turn style worth 2.90.
This is a joke they need to take that money out of the police officers pension.
qualified immunity says there’s no specific law or statute saying you can’t fire indiscriminately into a crowd of people whilst attempting to “apprehend” someone suspected of not paying their $2.90 subway fare… so they’ll be let off with a warning and a nice long paid vacation. Maybe the victims will get some token amount…
Oh wait, you didn’t even mention the cops getting punished, I guess it’s just a given at this point that they won’t be. We see a headline these days about cops shooting innocent people and we can’t suspend disbelief long enough to even imagine the cops getting punished.
America!
Not only that, the fare skipper will be charged with all the bloodshed.
If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month
Start giving police officers actual training. You know, teach them how to deescalate, how to actually use a gun (because they don’t even know that part) but also teach them to let go.
High speed chases may look cool but they endanger the innocent until found guilty suspect and hundreds of innocent bastards, none of those chases are worth it. Let them go, catch them later safely using actual police investigation work.
Guns may look cool but they kill at a distance and are a high risk for all bystanders, they should be a last resort, not a first resort.
Also,mgive police officers a mandatory psychological evaluation, filter out the psychopaths and the racists. Those you don’t want in a force that needs to protect and serve.
A lot more improvements can be and should be made, but you get the picture
If they start doing that, and only that, no police officer will ever see a pension ever again within a month
Seems like it’s a whole lot of not my problem.
Garnish their wages too. Fuck these fucking bastard pigs.
They would never win. The police were just doing their jobs after all. So what if a couple of innocent people get shot? After all, just because they are currently innocent, doesn’t mean they aren’t future criminals. So really, by shooting them they make it less likely that they’ll commit future crimes!
People win suits against the police all the time. It’s just the police rarely face consequences for it, especially as an institution.
It also exceptionally rare that police officers themselves get prosecuted. Chauvin’s conviction was a surprising twist as such things almost never happen. This is one situation where they threw one of their own under the bus to placate the public while the whole situation actually gets worse.
Like ever since BLM got started, the rate of police shootings have only gone up, and funding has increased AND there are far more laws protecting police than before. In many states it is becoming increasingly illegal to film police officers for any reason. So they might have thrown Chauvin under the bus, but they might make it illegal to film cops in his area, so future Chauvins who get filmed will have nothing to fear, as they will arrest the person filming them and charge them, and since the film obtained is criminal it will be dismissed as evidence.
I mean according to the article, technically they just tried to stop him over the $2.90 fare.
Then because of that he threatened to kill them and they realized he had a knife so they tasered him.
Then when that didn’t work and he ran at them with the knife they opened fire.
Multiple people are still dead because they brought guns into a disagreement over $2.90, but the headline implies a lot more unreasonableness on the individual cops’ parts as opposed to the overall policy.
Then because of that he threatened to kill them
They claim he made a threat. The article failed to print his side of the story for some curious reason. It isn’t printing any testimony from the bystanders, either.
Multiple people are still dead because they brought guns into a disagreement over $2.90, but the headline implies a lot more unreasonableness on the individual cops’ parts as opposed to the overall policy.
Cops will often lie about the danger of a suspect in order to justify elevating their use-of-force. That said, they weren’t that concerned by his unreasonableness when they deployed tasers into the crowd first. They didn’t switch to guns until they realized the tasers weren’t going to work.
They claim he made a threat. The article failed to print his side of the story for some curious reason. It isn’t printing any testimony from the bystanders, either.
Fair enough, supposedly they were wearing body cams so hopefully some of what actually happened can be answered objectively, I’m just pointing out what the article said. If he didn’t make a threat or have a knife, then tasering him is a wild escalation, it’s just that if he did, then the police can’t really just let him get on a train.
Cops will often lie about the danger of a suspect in order to justify elevating their use-of-force. That said, they weren’t that concerned by his unreasonableness when they deployed tasers into the crowd first. They didn’t switch to guns until they realized the tasers weren’t going to work.
Again, assuming what the article says is true, which is a big assumption, it’s not that crazy to taser a guy who just got onto a train with a knife and threatened to you. At that point you’re looking at a potential mass stabbing incident if you do nothing.
Again, who knows, maybe the cops are blowing his behaviour wildly out of proportion, I’m just saying that, based on the article, it sounds like he wasn’t just gunned down for jumping a turnstile.
At that point you’re looking at a potential mass stabbing incident
I mean, this is arguably what them not hiding looks like.
the police can’t really just let him get on a train
If they had, three people would have avoided bullet wounds and one of them wouldn’t be in the ER right now.
it’s not that crazy to taser a guy who just got onto a train
If you’ve ever ridden the subway in NYC, particularly during rush hour, the idea of firing a taser into a train full of people is absolutely crazy.
If they had, three people would have avoided bullet wounds and one of them wouldn’t be in the ER right now.
And maybe a bunch of people would have been stabbed by the guy with a knife who just threatened to kill someone.
If you’ve ever ridden the subway in NYC, particularly during rush hour, the idea of firing a taser into a train full of people is absolutely crazy.
Again, they could be lying about the knife and the threat, but if he did have a knife and just threaten to kill someone it would be absolutely crazy to let him get on a subway train full of people.
Might as well just shoot them instead
Oooh what a cool edge lord. You’ve definitely thought this through.
The public praises the police when they stand around and let an armed man be well enough alone in a group of civilians! Everyone loves it when police do that right?
Like Jesus fucking Christ, what would you do? Leave a guy with a knife getting onto a crowded train and have two dozen people stabbed? It is naiive to think that there was a good outcome possible once you start making police bust fare skipping, but it is also absurdly naiive to think that the police can let a man with a knife get onto a New York train with just a ‘hey, try not to stab anyone’.
And maybe aliens would have landed and eaten us all!
Joe Lozito would probably have something to say about cops willingness to let a crazed knife wielding man aboard a train…
https://nypost.com/2013/01/27/city-says-cops-had-no-duty-to-protect-subway-hero-who-subdued-killer/
Then because of that he threatened to kill them and they realized he had a knife so they tasered him.
Then when that didn’t work and he ran at them with the knife they opened fire.
Is the version of what’s the killers are saying. I’ll believe it when I see the camera footage. Good thing they have bodycams, so they can instantly prove their story.
I know the amount in this situation is ridiculously low… but is there an acceptable amount where shooting would have been justified? How much money should it take for a cop to be able to open fire on a suspect? $50? $100? $1000? 10,000? 1,000,000? What’s the cut-off?
How much money should it take for a cop to be able to open fire on a suspect?
Broadly speaking, the police shouldn’t be using lethal force unless someone’s life is at risk.
But that gets us to the “we think he might have had a knife” excuse, which is just taken at face value as Carte Blanche to do as thou wilt.
The escalation of force from “jump a turnstile” to “four police trying to surround and tase the suspect” is more tied back to the $2.90 cost. Had they simply shouted after the guy as he fled, nobody would be in the hospital right now. Instead, they went Commando Mode, and bystanders paid the price.
1,000 dollars is generally grand theft, a felony, and thus liable to the fleeing felon rule in some states.
If you mean morally, then no amount is worth killing over as long as there’s a robust safety net in place. In olden times losing money to thieves could mean literally starving. At which point it’s you versus them. In modern times there’s not really that friction for most of us.
You are suggesting the death penalty for theft. No.
I’m not suggesting it, the post title is suggesting it. They mention the $2.90 fare, as if to show what a pitifully low amount of money they were killed over, which suggests that had it been over a more reasonable sum of money, maybe the shooting would’ve been more understandable. Maybe had it been in the process of stealing a $100 million Van Gogh it would’ve been different.
It’s to highlight the idea that the law is more important to protect than the people.
Nothing? Money doesn’t need protection, people do.
Ahh yes. Nothing like killing a perp and a few bystanders for a few dollars’ worth of fare. USA! USA!
They shot because the guy charged at them with a knife, not because of the fare. OP’s thread title is deliberately misleading, in a desperate attempt to twist this into ACAB fuel.
Any bystander injuries are to be blamed on the aggressor Mr. Knifey.
They chased someone into a train over 3 dollars. There is now hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical bills, possibly over a million. Because someone “stole” a 3 dollar fare.
How the police react to stuff is absolutely up for debate. This is why we stopped doing car chases.
If someone runs a red light, and a cop tries to pull them over to give them a ticket, and instead the guy jumps out of the car and tries to attack the cop with a knife and gets shot in self-defense, it is absolutely not accurate to frame that as “cop shot that guy for running a red light”.
But this is what exactly the OP is trying to do. And that’s bullshit.
Police don’t chase for red lights anymore specifically because the damage car chases were doing was out of line with the civil infraction.
Don’t see how that’s relevant to anything. A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.
It is completely ridiculous to frame this as “police shot a man over $2.90”, when the shooting only happened after a verbal death threat, brandishing a lethal weapon, followed by an overt attempt to make good on that threat with that weapon.
Only the most ACAB-addled mind would think it appropriate to frame the events that way.
A police officer walking after another person, on foot, doesn’t have the potential for collateral damage that a car chase does.
Looks at the number of people that got shot.
Obviously that’s not true.
And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims. The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.
Looks at the number of people that got shot.
Obviously that’s not true.
Not as a result of two people walking, but as a result of someone brandishing a knife and attempting murder in a public place. Cringe goalpost move.
And all of that stuff with the weapon is based only on the police claims.
And all of what you’re saying is based on literally nothing but your hate boner for police, lmao.
The image released shows a knife clutched in the criminal’s hand. I’m sure he was strolling around like that very innocently and cops just opened fire on him for a laugh, right?
The straw-grasping is incredible.
The same police that won’t release the body camera footage.
Like it’d matter to your type. We have extensive hard video evidence of what happened with Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha, all put online publicly mere days after the event, and there are still innumerable imbeciles claiming shit it directly contradicts happened, lol.
The knife that mysteriously doesn’t show up on any footage and couldn’t be located after the fact?
I know better than to believe police lies. It’s all they do. ACAB, no exceptions.
There’s a still image of the police body cam here which shows the knife.
https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nypd-shooting-sutter-ave-subway-station-brooklyn/
Literally knife to gun fight. (Edit: allegedly, no video [yet])
Poor guy. Wish he could’ve been treated instead of killed. Wonder if here in the US we could put mancatchers/catch poles to good use:
An example of someone ostensibly suffering a mental health crisis eventually being subdued by a large number of responders with said poles.
Especially the NYPD
Until cops prove themselves trustworthy, I will assume they’re lying. They have a long way to go.
$1000 says there is no amount of examples of trustworthiness you could be shown that would change your mind, just admit what you are, don’t be prejudiced and too much of a wimp to admit it.
Yes, I am prejudiced when cops are involved. Where’s my $1000?
So you admit that you were lying here.
I know it’s like that by headline, but they repeatedly tried to subdue him and eventually he charged at them with a knife after having said “I’ll kill you”. I don’t know I would hesitate to stop him without my gun if he suddenly ran at me with a knife. I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.
If a guy doesn’t pay $3, has a knife and threatens the police -> mental problem. The answer isn’t shooting but handling the situation and deescalating.
Ok, so these people are too incompetent to win a 4v1 against an untrained opponent? Is this better somehow?
I’m just thinking survival, instinctively, and not about bystanders around me in that moment.
Kind of fair point for yourself.
However I expect more of a trained professional who has repeated firarms training. They should be sesitized to controlling their direction of fire even in an emergency.
It really is bizarre how many people seem to just accept lower standards for police than for random Joe gun owner off the street. It’s not confusing though; it’s just another facet of the great team sport of society for many people.
If we’re supposed to value and respect our police, maybe we should actually expect good things from them!
That’s not even the point. The training should have taught them how to de-escalate the situation, or even let it go. They transformed a 3$ fare skipped into a massacre, how’s that normal?
It’s 3$, if he has a knife, just let him go, it’s not worth the risk. You’ll track him down later and get him without killing him, passerbys and other cops.
You don’t need to drop a nuke because there’s a pickpocketer somewhere in the city
They stopped him for a few dollars’ worth of fare.
They shot him for charging at them with a knife.The uniformed duo followed the alleged fare-beater up the stairs to the elevated L train platform around 3 p.m., when they gave him commands to stop and turn around. Maddrey said during a verbal altercation, they “became aware of a knife.”
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.
As the encounter continued to escalate, a northbound L train pulled into the station. The train cars opened and the man jumped inside, according to police.
Where is this knife charge mentioned?
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.
it was the next sentence from what you copied lol
So this guy charged at them, then got tased and then got on a train car and got away… right
Was he on the limitless pill maybe? Maybe that’s secretly why they chased after him so hard?
bro, what? did you even read the article? they shot him? he didn’t get away?
they shot him when he was running away from them?
He was charging… away… with his knife…
We’ll see if that story pans out, I’m sure the body cam footage is coming any minute…
The statement by the Department Chief literally references that there is body cam footage, that is the source of information for the statement.
No no no. They mean the footage being released for public scrutiny. The police have lied about the body camera footage before.
This has been an ongoing problem in the city. Fuckin Mayor Officer Landlord has been dumping millions into multiple cops sitting on platforms, on their phones, watching for people jumping the 2.90 fare. Which they just raised from 2.70. They’re more than spending what they’re hypothetically losing on fare jumpers. Neoliberal capitalist bullshit in action.
Meanwhile in Albuquerque we’ve made buses free because the fare infrastructure costs more than to run the buses.
I think if people had even more guns this could have been avoided. What if there was a six year old with a 22 there to respond to the gunshots with some of his own? maybe less people would be dead.
Guns make everyone way safer. We need to start providing them in utero.
Right, or the bystander that got shot in the head could have returned fire, if only he were armed
Take the guns from the police and give them to the embryos. I think you’re on to something here.
Why stop at guns? Everyone should have access to portable WMDs to keep the world safe.
Hey, we have to draw the line somewhere. Let’s stop at a gigaton.
I think it’s also the responsible thing to limit our young people to the kiloton range until they are 21.
Make sure the 17 year olds in the military get the good stuff though.
What if the guns got guns
How dare you politicize gun violence while a police officer is injured!
You mean the one that shot the other people? Officer mental health is important! Someone think of the shooter!!
Abortions are prebirth, so should guns
Are the NYPD still carrying guns with a 12 pound trigger pull? Why can’t they aim for shit?
Meanwhile corporations steal billions through white collar crime and the police do nothing. Nearly all blue collar crime is due to poverty and white collar crime creates more poverty. If police really wanted to stop crime they’d be pouring over corporations accounting to find the stolen money.
If police really wanted to stop crime they’d be pouring over corporations accounting to find the stolen money.
Sounds like dirty authoritarian big government communism to me.
Well it’s obvious there’s none of that in New York so they’re stuck chasing $3 fare dodging
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.
NYPD still haven’t produced a knife from the scene.
Why anyone would believe a word out of any pigs mouth without seeing body cam footage is beyond me
