New York – The state’s attorney general office was investigating an off-duty police officer’s fatal shooting of a man who apparently attacked him during a case of road rage early Monday.
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The New York Police Department officer was driving his personal vehicle in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn shortly after midnight when he was involved in a traffic dispute with 37-year-old Delrawn Small, police said.
When the officer and Small stopped at a red light, Small got out of his vehicle and punched the officer repeatedly in the head through an open window, according to police. The officer, who had just finished his shift and was on his way home, pulled out his service weapon and killed Small, authorities said. The officer, whose name wasn’t immediately released, was treated at a hospital for minor injuries.
Small’s family held a news conference later Monday demanding a full investigation.
Eric Soufer, a spokesman for New York Attorney General Eric Scheniderman, said prosecutors had obtained a search warrant for the officer’s car and were “actively reviewing the case.” The attorney general’s office had also been in contact with police and Small’s family, he said.
The attorney general is authorized to investigate police shootings when either the person killed is unarmed or there are questions about the threat they posed.
The police department was also investigating, Police Commissioner William Bratton said. Investigators gathered surveillance video and interviewed the officer, Bratton said.
But Bratton, citing the ongoing investigations, warned that it was too early to say whether the officer was justified in his actions and said police are still trying to determine what sparked the traffic dispute.
Any time a police officer is attacked s/he must be concerned that the attacker me take the PO’s weapon if the PO is physically compromised.
If this nut job with road rage knocked the PO unconscious he could have easily taken the officer’s weapon. So why does the commish think it’s relevant if the perp had a weapon? Since he may have had the PO’s if he had not neutralized the situation. It’s over 30 years since i attended the police academy. But i remember this same scenario, because they drilled it into our heads over and over.
So the NYAG opens an investigation that will cost millions of taxpayer dollars in order to pacify the family of a man who could not control his temper behind the wheel of a car, enabling this family enablers. I’m so glad I live in Texas!
As I wrote yesterday, this unfortunate incident will ruin the lives of (at least) two men. It would have been better, in this instance, if the cop had found an alternative means of subduing his attacker instead of shooting and killing him. Now he will pay the price of knowing he killed a man, likely losing his job, and depending on the circumstances, go to jail. If this was really just a result of “minor injuries” the reaction of the officer would be the definition of overkill.
As for the thug that punched him, not too many tears, but realize he was likely drunk and deserved to get arrested, not killed, a lesson as to what may happen when you act stupidly with anger.