Closing Bell: Shooting in Front of 370 Lafayette
The Local blog has the report on an undercover operation gone tragically wrong in Clinton Hill…Evidently an undercover cop sitting on the stoop at 370 Lafayette Avenue was attacked by a resident of the building who was angry at his presence on the stoop. One thing led to another and the resident was shot. Check…
The Local blog has the report on an undercover operation gone tragically wrong in Clinton Hill…Evidently an undercover cop sitting on the stoop at 370 Lafayette Avenue was attacked by a resident of the building who was angry at his presence on the stoop. One thing led to another and the resident was shot. Check The Local for more details. Update: The Daily News is reporting that the fight started because the policeman had an earpiece in that prevented him from hearing the resident, and ex-con, giving an initial command to get off his stoop; the resident then followed up with a kick to the back of the head and a punch in the face.
supersleuth- i said i would not know he was a cop and would be annoyed and would feel threatened enough to call the cops if he did not leave. but i said that would be worth it to me. that said, i take your point that it may not be necessary for ghosts to be on stoops for an operation, so they shouldn’t unless they have to.
Brooklynista- show me one comment where someone was celebrating Walker’s death. you ought to be ashamed of yourself for making such a baseless comment. People were lauding that there is finally a police presence after a LOT of community push for one, separate from the tragedy. the debate was over whether the ghost on the stoop was the proximate cause for Walker’s fatal injuries, and so his death should have been forseeable just from the practice, or whether it was that particular cop’s behavior that was or was not the cause. try reading AND comprehending.
Amen, amen, Supersleuth, and Ramona! And, thank goodness for the common sense, conscious and compassionate reasoning of the majority of those who have posted to this thread! Regardless of how poorly Walker may have responded to the problem of an “intruder” on his stoop, the ignorant cops who set this whole chain of events in motion by their mere presence on the stoop, handled their response to his upset even worse. Now an unarmed brother is dead for no good reason. Those who are celebrating his death as an indicator that the police are finally doing something about drug dealing in the nabe just ought to be ashamed of themselves. As for Xander Crews? Just ignore him/her. This individual is a troll who delights in provoking emotional responses. No need to feed the fool.
xander- last i checked “asshole” was as much a name as”racist” and while you might not think you are either and some of your best friends are black and/or you voted for obama and liked run dmc back in the day, judging by your comments you are damn close to being a racist. you are spouting off some really inane, out of wacka nd , uh, yeah. racist crap, just because you’re not using epithets doesn’t mean we can’t crack the code(d) language and references.
and as for brownstoner. walker’s criminal past has nothing to with this. bringing it up is a tactic worthy of rudy.
Blowfish, I also live on a corner with a lot of drug activity and, selfishly, would love to see some regular busts until the market moved elsewhere. However I think using private property for this purpose without permission is pushing it. Sorry to belabor the point but if this happened to you, you would not know the person sitting on your stoop was a cop. It would just appear that they were loitering. As a woman, I think I would actually feel a little threatened by a strange man sitting on my steps without permission. (Particularly if, like Walker’s mother, I was in my seventies, legally blind and an amputee.) Depending on my level of timidity that day I may even be reluctant to ask the person to move, because I would assume, just by virtue of them sitting there, that they didn’t have too much regard for my interests. If I were home by myself at night I might even be afraid to open the door, which, if they had some criminal intent, would give them the opportunity to force themselves into my house.
You are right, I misspoke when I said the undercovers were posturing as drug dealers. But regardless, to the person whose property they are using I think they would seem shady just by virtue of what they were doing. And based on some knowledge of this issue (not from TV) I think that most undercover narcotics officers affect a less than clean cut look because sometimes they play the ghost role and other times the buyer. So I imagine these guys didn’t exactly look like Jehovah’s Witnesses taking a break from knocking on doors.
I think that this incident may result in a new policy precluding the use of private property by undercover cops when not absolutely necessary.
Xander — this happened on Saturday night. A LOT of people with jobs are home on Saturday night.
supersleuth- yes, i am okay with a cop hanging out on my stoop, not sure why you would have assumed otherwise. like i said, i live in that neighborhood. i don’t think the cop was posturing as a drug dealer- he was backup for a cop posturing as a buyer in front of a bodega. so, he was posturing as an invited guest. yes, had i come out of my house, i would have been annoyed and would have asked him to leave, not knowing he was a cop. if he did not leave, i would have gone back inside and called the cops.
all of this is to say nothing about what happened at 370 Gates. i don’t follow what necessitated the gun to be drawn, even if he was being assaulted, but i’d rather not try to glean who might have been at fault from the article. i’m just saying the premise of an undercover cop on my stoop, or anyone’s stoop, where there is already dangerous activity, does not offend me.
^^^No, Cop’s Husbands shoot Cops in Park Slope. But maybe he did have a job.
Stuff like this doesn’t happen in Park Slope because everyone seems to have a job.
Now they are saying that the cop was wearing earphones and therefore could not hear Walker (who was standing right next to him). Even if that is believable, and Walker did start physically assaulting the cop, he must have known that Walker had just come from inside the building and had a good idea of the motivation for the assault. Then he is assisted by his partner, who grabs Walker, but the first cop still sees a need to pull out a gun?
I also find it hard to believe that Walker would grab the gun if he was indeed aware that the armed man was a police officer. Not a smart thing to do in any event, but if you were being restrained by one apparent thug while another was pointing a gun directly at you, that might be a natural reflex action.
Brownstoner, I find it interesting that you emphasize that Walker was an ex-con. There is no question that the whole thing was an unfortunate accident, arguably resulting from police error, or a systemic over-reliance on firearms by law enforcement. Do you mean to suggest that one’s view of the incident should be different if the victim is an ex-con vs. someone who has never been caught breaking the law? It’s not as though there is an issue as to whether he “brought it on himself” by association with other criminals. In this case, the cops only appeared to be criminal types and were clearly not associates of the victim.
I agree with the prior post saying that if the cops were intent on not blowing their cover they should have just left the scene rather than engaging with Walker. Given their posture as drug dealers hanging out on other people’s property they might have chalked up any flack they received to occupational hazards. It would be different if they witnessed Walker assaulting a citizen, but then again the appropriate thing to do would still be to identify themselves.
Blowfish — I take it you are okay with the cops (posturing as drug dealers) hanging out on private stoops as long as it is not your stoop. How would you feel if you walked out of your door to see a shady character lounging on your steps? Also note that this was the stoop of a single family home not an apartment building, so it was clearly not someone who had any reason to be there.
i live there. i am so grateful the police are trying to bust up the drug dealing activity, insofar as it is connected to violence. i don’t think there is anything wrong with operating a sting from stoops of apartments- it does not increase the level of danger if that’s where dealing is occuring with or without police presence.