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Death by 'Friendly Fire'
May 29th, 2009

The fatal shooting of a black police officer in East Harlem last night is once again raising the troubling issue of how police officers react to black men on city streets.

According to the account in the Times, Officer Omar Edwards, who was in plainclothes, was shot shortly after he came off duty by a fellow officer who mistook him for a criminal. The officer who fired the fatal shots — Andrew Dunton — is white and lives on Long Island. He also was not in uniform, the Daily News reported. Edwards apparently had been chasing a man who he believed had broken into his car.

While saying investigators were still sorting out details of what happened, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference, “Rest assured we will find out exactly what happened here and see what we can learn from it so it can never happen again.”

Two big unanswered questions according to Running Scared, are ” did the officers identify themselves? And what did Edwards do when the officers approached him?”

“Police rules put the burden on an off-duty officer to identify himself in any confrontation with other cops,” the News said. but also expect the “challenging officer … to use sound tactics and judgment in approaching the situation.”

Witnesses have reportedly said that Dunton and another cop did identify themselves as police. Since Edwards himself was pursuing a suspect, though, could he have thought the police were challenging him — not their fellow officer?

In City Room, Sewell Chan reviews the history of black New York City police being shot by their white colleagues, dating back to the first known case in 1940. ” Although such cases have been relatively rare, they have attracted great scrutiny in recent years,” Chan writes, raising concerns about “departmental procedures involving communications, as well as issues of race.”

In comments to the Associated Press, the Rev. Al Sharpton cited “a growing pattern of black officers being killed with the assumption that they are the criminals.” Sharpton has issued a statement calling for a federal investigation. “Can police investigate themselves fairly and impartially?” it asks. “It would seem very difficult at best and unlikely in fact.”

“This shooting death speaks volumes to the issue many black men have with law enforcement being trigger-happy,” wrote the self-described African-American conservative in The Hinterland Gazette. “How many other black men have had similar run-ins with law enforcement? They cannot just make an assumption that because this man is black he is automatically a suspect of some type.”

By Gail Robinson on May 29, 2009, 1:32 pm
In category: Civil Rights, Crime & Safety, Gotham City | 1 Comment »

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One Response to “Death by 'Friendly Fire'”

  1. Tim Says:
    May 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm

    read somewhere else that the three witnesses who claim Dunton identified himself were the two other cops and the suspect Edwards had been chasing.

    Hmmm. The suspect has zero credibility, and neither do the two cops riding around with the trigger-happy thug for that matter.

    It’s time for the racist thug culture of the NYPD to end. past time.

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