Cops Have Gone Wild Again, They Shoot 4 in Subway Stop
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| Gregory Depelche, 49, was one of four people shot by police officers on Sunday afternoon during a confrontation between officers and a knife-wielding man who they believed had not paid his fare.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times |
It was during the end of the Bloomberg Administration in NYC we had a Police force with little restraints. They would stop anyone for no reason and then "search and frisk". A very stupid idea from them Mayor Giuliani. Giuliani is aged but his stupidity is always been there. It seemed like there was nothing the police could do wrong. This is not long after the downing of the Twin Towers so the Police had powers it never had since the 1960's. You had to be not too bright to call the cops on items that were not life-threatening, otherwise, there was the chance that the one calling the cops was taking a ride on the cop car with handcuffs on his wrists.
Today the same thing happened. I not only speak of what Ive seen but what I have experienced. Being assaulted and hitting in self-defense but because a woman (bigger than most men, not in height but in everything else) and you are taken in for menacing and assault. It is plain and very clear we have a mayor who has surrounded himself with his buddies, like my Compadre Puerto Rican Police commissioner who is being made to resign in an FBI investigation involving him, his twin brother, the Mayor, and others.
Then how is the police supposed to function when there is no accountability even though we have a Civilian board to examine cases stemming from Cops out of control, many by veteran cops on the roster of complaints, those cases have been dismissed by the mayor or Police commissioner.
Now the Public pays the price it starts where the city's most poor are, The Bronx. This awful sad incident because a prep jumped the turnstiles and ran from cops, we had cops shooting from different directions Fatally shooting two including the perp, and two others with life-threatening gunshots including a cop.
Below is the follow-up story from The New York Times.
By Hurubie Meko and Wesley Parnell
The New York Times
On Sunday night Leighton Lee received a strange call from a police officer asking him cryptic questions about his best friend: What was he like? Where would he be going on the subway on a Sunday afternoon?
Mr. Lee wanted to know why he was being asked so many questions about his friend, Gregory Delpeche. The officer told him Mr. Delpeche was part of “an ongoing investigation,” he said.
Worried, Mr. Lee checked the news and saw there had been a shooting in Brooklyn, on the subway line Mr. Delpeche took to his job at Woodhull Hospital. As videos of the scene poured in on social media, Mr. Lee recognized his friend of decades lying on the ground, wounded.
“I knew that was him, and my heart dropped,” he said in a phone interview on Tuesday. “He was the one that got shot in the head.”
Mr. Delpeche, 49, was one of two bystanders shot by police officers on Sunday afternoon during a confrontation at the Sutter Avenue subway station between officers and a knife-wielding man who they believed had not paid his fare.
The man who the police said threatened them with a knife, later identified as Derell Mickles, 37, was shot in the stomach. A 26-year-old female bystander was grazed by a bullet and was in stable condition as of Monday. One of the officers was struck by a bullet under his armpit and has been released from the hospital.
Now, Mr. Lee said his friend is barely responsive in Kings County Hospital, where he is in critical condition. Doctors told him that a bullet had gone through Mr. Delpeche’s head and that fragments were removed. “I’m not sure he can hear me; he did put his thumbs up once,” Mr. Lee said.
The police should not have fired, he said. “It was very reckless of them to be shooting in a crowded train station,” when “they knew a stray bullet could hit someone,” Mr. Lee said. “It happened to be my childhood friend of 30 or 40 years.”
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| A train is stopped at an elevated subway station at dusk as two police officers stand on the platform. |
The shooting at the Sutter Avenue subway station was “reckless,” said Leighton Lee, a friend of one of the bystanders who was wounded.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times
Nicholas Liakas, a lawyer representing Mr. Delpeche’s family, said on Tuesday night that the man’s relatives were hoping that the Police Department would voluntarily release body camera footage of what happened on Sunday, because they believe “something needs to be done and accountability needs to be met here.”
Mr. Liakas called the police officers’ actions “over-aggressive” and said it was “unacceptable that an innocent bystander is now going to be dealing with a lifetime of recovery and issues.”
The melee in the subway on Sunday comes amid a push by Mayor Eric Adams’s administration to reduce crime in New York City’s transit system. Since taking office, Mr. Adams has flooded the system with police officers, introduced gun-detecting scanners inside subway stations and cracked down on fare evasion. Crime in the subway declined by about seven percent in the first six months of this year compared with the same period last year, according to city data.
In 2022, fare evasion cost the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the state agency that runs the transit system, nearly $700 million in lost revenue. Officials have said an aggressive approach to fare enforcement can also keep weapons out of the system and stop criminals from committing serious offenses.
But after the shootings on Sunday, some critics expressed concerns about the Police Department’s tactics.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Adams pushed back, saying that Mr. Mickles was “not shot for fare evasion” and that “he was shot because he had a knife.”
Mr. Adams also said the officers “should be commended for how they really showed a great level of restraint.”
“And it’s just unfortunate that innocent people were shot because of that,” he said.
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| Mayor Eric Adams sits in front of a microphone at a news conference, holding one hand to his face with a serious expression. |
At a news conference on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams pushed back on criticism that the police officers who opened fire at a subway station had behaved inappropriately.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times
The confrontation that led to the shootings began around 3 p.m. on Sunday when the police said they saw Mr. Mickles enter the L train station on the border of East New York and Brownsville without paying.
The officers followed Mr. Mickles, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey said at a news conference on Sunday night, and “became aware” that he had a knife in his pocket.
When a Manhattan-bound L train entered the station, Mr. Mickles boarded the train and the officers followed him and fired Tasers at him, Chief Maddrey said. The Tasers did not subdue Mr. Mickles; he came at one of the officers with the knife, the chief said, and both officers fired at him.
Bystander video shows a chaotic aftermath. Mr. Mickles can be seen in the doorway of a subway car, lying in a pool of blood, his hands cuffed behind his back. Another clip shows the wounded officer being helped by colleagues.
Another wounded person can be seen on the floor at the far end of an adjacent car.
Mr. Mickles remains in critical condition at Kings County Hospital. He faces charges of first-degree attempted assault, theft of services, menacing and criminal possession of a weapon, according to the police.
On Tuesday evening, around 7 p.m., more than 200 people massed outside the Sutter Avenue station to protest the shootings. About an hour later, police officers arrived, and the crowd moved to outside the 73rd Precinct.
Adiagha Faizah, an artist who joined the protesters as they marched past her home, said police use of force was more common in Brownsville than in other parts of the city. “This keeps happening again and again,” she said. “It typically happens in our community. They don’t police Williamsburg like this; they don’t police Dumbo or Park Slope.”
Shortly after, the police deployed mace, and the crowd began to disperse. As some demonstrators lingered, officers began making arrests.
Members of Mr. Delpeche’s family are expected to hold a news conference Wednesday in Brownsville. His friend, Mr. Lee, said Mr. Delpeche had worked at Woodhull for 20 years and “lived at his job.”
“All that he did,” he said, “was work and go to the gym.”
If Mr. Delpeche could speak about what happened to him, he would say, “Of all the people, me,” Mr. Lee said.
“He’d be like, ‘my luck,’” Mr. Lee said. “He would always say that: ‘My luck.’”
Dana Rubinstein contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York region. More about Hurubie Meko
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