Black cop killed by white officer: Horror in East Harlem as off-duty rookie is shot p

Black cop killed by white officer: Horror in East Harlem as off-duty rookie is shot pursuing suspect

BY ALISON GENDAR, ERICA PEARSON, BARRY PADDOCK AND LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Friday, May 29th 2009, 12:32 PM






An off-duty rookie cop chasing a suspected car thief in East Harlem with his gun drawn was shot and killed Thursday night when an officer mistook him for a criminal.

"Police! Stop! Drop it!" cops from the 25th Precinct shouted at Omar Edwards, 25.
As he started to turn toward him - the gun still in his hand - an officer opened fire, sources said.

The officer involved in the shooting is white, Edwards is black and had no visible NYPD identification on him, sources said. It was unclear if Edwards identified himself.

"This is always a black cop's fear, that he'd be mistaken for a [suspect]," a source said.

His father couldn't fathom how such a fatal mistake could happen.
"If a police officer sees someone with a gun, you don't just fire without asking questions or trying to apprehend the person," said Ricardo Edwards, 72. "If the person was firing at a police officer, I understand."
"It's a horror for everyone involved. No one comes out unscathed," a police source said.

One dejected cop said Edwards "just became a new father. He took some personal time so he could take the baby to North Carolina to meet his folks."
Edwards' mother, Natalia Harding, said her son had just married his girlfriend, Danielle Glen, last month at City Hall. They have two kids - 11/2-year-old Xavier and 7-month-old Keanua.

"I'm hurt that they took my son. That's my baby they took from me. And all I got was his last hug and kiss when he went to work [tonight] and he said, 'Ma, I'll see you when I come home,' " Natalia Harding said between sobs Friday morning at her Brooklyn apartment.

NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Edwards, who had been on the force less than two years and worked out of a Manhattan housing unit, had left work about 10:30 p.m.
He was in street clothes as he walked toward his car parked about a block away on Second Ave. between E. 124th and E. 125th St., where he saw Miguel Goitia rummaging through the vehicle. The driver's side window was busted out.

Edwards grabbed Goitia, who managed to slip out of his sweater and escape Edwards' grip, Kelly said.
Gun drawn, Edwards gave chase.

At the same time, three plainclothes officers in an unmarked car saw Edwards running down the street. The car made a U-turn, and one of the officers, a white cop with more than four years on the job, got out and fired six shots - hitting Edwards twice, once in the left arm and once in the chest, Kelly said.
Edwards did not fire his weapon.
Maalik Lane, 20, who was walking nearby, said suddenly he heard shots.
"More than five, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then there were just a lot of police blocking the streets."
Mayor Bloomberg, at a press conference at Harlem Hospital, said he expressed his sorrow to Edwards' wife.

"Nothing that you can ever say will bring back the deceased. He was there protecting the rest of us. We will find out what happened," Bloomberg said. "This is a tragedy. We'll see what we can learn from it."

Cops discovered Edwards was one of them when rescue crews cut open his shirt to treat the bleeding and saw a police academy shirt. They then searched his pockets and found his shield, sources said.

Investigators said the anti-crime cops arrested the car-theft suspect Goitia.
Edwards' mother said her son's dream was to be a cop.

"Ever since he was a little kid, he wanted to be a police officer. Something I didn't want, but it was his choice and he loved what he was doing. He loved helping other people," Harding said, noting she always worried about his safety.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/05/28/2009-05-28_black_cop_killed_by_white_officer.html

 

You see, when people come up with the whole "the guy had a gun. what was the cop supposed to think" defense, i really feel like smashing their brains in with a pestle. Jesus, were you blind? Didnt you see that the guy was dropping the gun? We're talkin about a guy who's left a widow and a fatherless kid on earth to fend for themselves and that's what you have to say? :smt068

 

That is so sad!

 

Dang, this story is ridiculous. Thoughts and prayers go out to the man's family. :smt085

 

damn

 

Terrible.

 

It's a damn shame that this policeman was killed. What is not said in all of this is that the reputation and image of a black man as being a criminal is so bad that any black man is subject to being killed by mistake, even if he was defending his family. God help him if he slapped his white wife or girlfriend in public he would be seen as a violent mugger or committing an assualt against a white person. Black men do not want to admit it but the perceptions created by the high black crime rates has endangered all black men as to be dangerous, then we are targets for many non-blacks. Remember the scene in the movie "Crash" when the brother was killed by the police when he reached for a small statuette in his pocket, but the policeman thought he was reaching for a gun. The reputation created by other black men who commits crimes has endangered all other black men who are law abiding. Many cannot see the connection or admit it and say it, I just did. This does not take many white policemen off the hook because it shows that they tend to lump us (black men) as all the same anyway. There is a kind of denial on both sides to admit this thing. Watch me get slammed by the liberal blacks here for saying this.

 

Damn, ain't this a bitch?

 

Then what are you complaining about?

It's only right and just that you, me, and your sons should be rightfully shot down until we can control our criminal element the way that white men and others do.

Since whites and others commit no crime, anyone who shoots them down should go to prison. Now, if someone shoots your son down, that's understandable. In fact, when bullies decide to humiliate your son, knowing that he doesn't enjoy equal protection under the law (and therefore any confrontation and/or violence that results is his fault), your son should understand that it's all those nigger criminals' fault, and turn around and spread his cheeks and offer up the k.y.

Like underclasses everywhere, we commit crime all out of proportion to our numbers! So it's no crime to punish those of us who live upright and don't commit crime! That's how you resolve it! Just apologize after you shoot down blacktiger's son.

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What a fuckin mealy-mouthed post. Got the nerve to include "This does not take many white policemen off the hook" as an out.

Bottom line is: ONE PEOPLE, ONE LAW. Don't even THINK ABOUT punishing me or mine for anyone else's fuckin crime.

 

What??

 

I know I am going to get me a new ass ripped for this one but.....

Does it not say in the article that he ran towards police with his gun drawn?

Does it not say that the police yelled stop police drop it?

As a police officer he knew the rules of engagement and knew that running towards police while they were issuing the police challenge was a death sentence. I don't know about the states but in Canada if you issue the police challenge POLICE DON"T MOVE and they move....you shoot. No questions asked especially if he/she has a gun. You only issue that challenge if your life is in danger.

I was a cop for a number of years. In that exact same situation, an armed man running at me with a gun after I told him to drop it....I would have done the exact same thing.

yes it sucks, yes it is a tragedy but thats what happens out there.

 

No, it doesnt say that....

He had only started to turn towards the man, to see who was behind him? To say he was a cop? We will never know because some fucking coward with a badge shot him dead before he assessed the situation.

A man running with a gun does not mean you shoot him dead before assessing what is going on.

There was an incident in California a few years back where the NARCOs kicked in the wrong door and shot a woman dead who was holding a baby in her arms. They kicked her door down and when she stood up in shock they shot her and said she was being aggressive by standing up. She never even had time to process the information as to what was going on. Same here.

 

Sad. Thoughts and prayers go out to the man's family.

 

Racism amongst police has very little to do with crimes committed by Black People.

Ask yourself, why do people become cops?

Clearly, some do because they want to do good in the world, and they think they can do that as police. Some. And some do it for the benefits.

But just as we've seen that rapists and pedophiles are attracted to working in jobs where they will have authority & control over, and access to, children, a certain type of person is attracted to jobs which give them authority & control over other people, and the ability to use violence in a way sanctioned by society.

It's ridiculously niave to think that people who like to hurt other people will not be attracted to a job where they can brutalize people and never be arrested. Police officers who *are* punished for violence at worst loose their jobs -- they are almost never found guilty of assault. So, if you like to assault people, being a cop's a good idea.

This holds for any race, because we have seen this type of police racism with officers of every race.

Police would have you believe that their tendencies toward racism come from interacting with the worst element of the Black Community. But that ignores the fact that they deal with the worst element of all races.


Now, consider that there are areas where the population is 100% White, and the Cops will start targeting & harassing the poorest person in town, or the one who used to live somewhere else, etc.

Consider that Black people own less of the wealth in this country than, for instance White people, and that as such they are less likely to be represented by expensive lawyers.

Consider that, if you were looking for a target to commit assault against, the best target would be one that has less credibility to a media that runs stories about Black criminals every day, certainly less credibility than someone with the respected position of "Police Officer", someone who is statistically less likely to be represented by an expensive lawyer, someone you could harrass, beat or kill and be more likely to get away it.


I'm not suggesting that every cop who beats or kills a Black Man is consciously making strategic decisions. But it is no coincidence that the group easiest to target by police is also the group most most hated & maligned by police, and is also the group most likely to be harased beaten & killed by the police.

It's a larger, more dangerous, more violent, more vile, and more revolting version of the high school bully, and to that bully all Black Men are the school nerd. And so long as we take that bully's word for why he does it, so long as we buy into their excuses and bullshit, the problem will continue to get worse instead of better until the line between police officer and violent neighborhood-terrorizing thug is invisible, and we're all just paying tribute to the bastards to keep them off our backs.

 

My boss thinks 'coz they've low IQ.

 

@ vanilla2chai:

I had the wonderful chance to visit Montreal a few years back and one of the things that struck me was how different the police force is up there. They were there, but there was no hostility, no intimidation towards a Black Man simply walking down the street. The difference between the police there, and in my hometown of Chicago for instance, was as big as the difference between a radiator and a nuclear bomb.

 

Is he related to Alan Keyes?

 

As an example, to back up my post above:

In Chicago, you may have heard about the moratorium on the death penalty. This came about when it was revealed that many, many of our Death Row inmates, mostly Black Men, were innocent. Not just not guilty, but innocent.

Of course, they had been telling people for years that they were innocent, but no one listened.

A local alternative weekly newspaper called The Reader started running articles about some of their stories. These men claimed they had been tortured by Area 1 police officers into making false confessions.

Eventually, these stories led some Northwestern University Journalism students to do intense research on some of the men on Death Row. They found a great deal of evidence to support their claims. One man claimed that during a break in the torture he was left alone in the interrogation room, and scrawled that he was innocent under the bench before giving in and making the false confession. That scrawled message was found, but it wasn't enough to clear him.

Eventually, between the Journalism students & new DNA evidence, the Men on Death Row began to be proven innocent, one by one, and then the numbers started to stack up.

Ultimately, it became too much to ignore, and it became clear that maintaining a Death Penalty in a state with so many false convictions was unethical.


What was revealed during all this was this:


Area 1 police officers had a system. When there was pressure to solve a case, they would drive into predominately Black neighborhoods and pick up random Black Men.

Then they would take those men back to the station and torture them -- oftentimes with Gitmo-like techniques such as electric shock machines -- until they confessed.

Then they would announce the case "solved".

In court, these Black Men would insist they were innocent. Juries and judges universally sided with the authority of the police officers who insisted they were not.

The pattern continued in appeals court, where the credibility of random Black Men, even with no priors, even with no history of any flaws of character, was never strong enough to compete with the credibility of a police officer.


-----

What one can see from these cases is that the Police officers at Area 1 were not motivated by a bias toward Black Men developed through interaction with Black criminals. They were not even motivated by old-school Southern racism, necessarily (although I have no doubt that many or all of them were indeed that type of racist).

They were motivated by an interest in seeking out the easiest targets. Rather than solve cases, they simply found people that no one would believe, and tortured them into confessing. The people that they assumed (rightly as it turned out) that no one would believe just happened to be Black Men.

It would be silly to assume that Area 1 was an anomaly, not reflected in any other US city. For instance, there is already evidence to indicate that this happened in other districts in Chicago. I have heard from many people in California that similar practices have occured there as well.

And it would be silly to think such things only happened in the past. That's what they said in the past, too.

By taking the police officer's word every time over every Black Man, we make such astounding injustice possible.

 

So, to bring it back to the case in question, when you have institutionalized racism in the justice system, as we do, and that racism serves to make the job of police easier, as it does, and that racism further enables certain types of police officers to engage in sanctioned violence, then you have a system where not only is violence against Black Men acceptable, it is encouraged. The different set of rules as to how to respond to Black Men as opposed to how to respond to White Men in any given situation is reinforced through interaction with other officers, until it becomes a basic part of police training.

Years of this double standard leads to a situation where a Black Man holding a gun is a completely different thing than a White Man holding a gun.

We've had this happen a couple times in Chicago, but I've never seen the reverse -- where a Black Cop kills a White Cop accidentally. That's not a coincidence. That can't be a coincidence.