NYPD Officer Shot

A New York City police officer was shot in the head Saturday night, states the Associated Press.  The man accused of shooting the officer will be arraigned Sunday on charges including two counts of attempted murder of a police officer, officials said.

No evidence has been given that the shooting was related to protests or riots.

Demetrius Blackwell was arrested Saturday night in the shooting of Officer Brian Moore, who remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition.

The AP:  “Bratton said Blackwell has a criminal record that includes a weapons possession charge, but the suspect made no such anti-police postings and was being pursued by the anti-crime officers because of his behavior.”

Blackwell, 35, was expected to be arraigned Sunday afternoon, the Queens district attorney’s office said. It was not clear if he had a lawyer.

NYPD Helicopter Crash

Recently, an NYPD pilot reportedly made a mistake while at the controls of a police helicopter during a training exercise and crashed — causing more than $700,000 in damage, stated The New York Post on Tuesday.

The police lieutenant was piloting the chopper at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn on April 3rd when “something went wrong” while he tried to simulate an autorotation 200 feet in the air, sources said.

He first put the engine in “idle” as required when he reached the rotation altitude, sources said. But then instead of causing an engine “flare’’ by increasing the throttle to 100 percent and creating the rotation, he lost control of the aircraft, sources said.

In related news, in 2014, an air traffic control recording confirmed that a New York Police Department helicopter flew at a drone hovering near the George Washington Bridge.  Also, police never appeared to worry about a crash with the drone.

Two men associated with the drone were later charged with felony reckless endangerment in that situation, even though the helicopter flew at the drone and not the other way around.

Below is a recording of the audio transmission from that incident.

More info:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/police-recording-confirms-nypd-flew-at-a-drone-never-feared-crash

NYPD caught editing Wikipedia pages on alleged police brutality

Several incidents of alleged police brutality have made headlines in recent months, it seems police in New York have come up with a new way to bolster their public image.

By editing Wikipedia pages on alleged police brutality incidents, they have made them look more favorable to the officers involved.

CapitalNewYork has checked recent edits to the Wikipedia pages for Eric Garner, Sean Bell and Amadou Diallo — all of whom died at the hands of NYPD officers under controversial circumstances.

They found discrepancies and tracked them to computers at the NYPD’s headquarters at 1 Police Plaza.

The edits were made to make the circumstances surrounding the shootings more favorable to the police officers.

In the case of Eric Garner, who died last year after an officer placed him in a chokehold that was prohibited by NYPD’s own rules, CaptialNewYork found that the following changes were made:

• “Garner raised both his arms in the air” was changed to “Garner flailed his arms about as he spoke.”

•  “[P]ush Garner’s face into the sidewalk” was changed to “push Garner’s head down into the sidewalk.”

•  “Use of the chokehold has been prohibited” was changed to “Use of the chokehold is legal, but has been prohibited.”

•  The sentence, “Garner, who was considerably larger than any of the officers, continued to struggle with them,” was added to the description of the incident.

• Instances of the word “chokehold” were replaced twice, once to “chokehold or headlock,” and once to “respiratory distress.

NYPD Chief Doesn’t Support Officers Turning Backs On Mayor

According to Yahoo News, after a video of NYPD police officers turning their back on New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio went viral over the weekend, the city’s Police Commission Bill Bratton says he does not support “that particular activity.”

The officers were waiting at a Brooklyn hospital where the two policemen were being treated after being shot in their patrol car by a lone gunman who officials say was out for revenge for the deaths of Michael Brown of Ferguson, MO and Eric Garner of Staten Island, NY.

“I don’t support that particular activity,” Bratton said on NBC’s “Today” show of the back-turning.  “I don’t think it was appropriate, particularly in that setting, but it’s reflective of the anger of some of them.”

Slap In The Face? No Indictment For Officer In NYC Chokehold Death

Eric Garner

According to the AP, a grand jury cleared a white New York City police officer Wednesday in the videotaped chokehold death of an unarmed black man who had been stopped on suspicion of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, a lawyer for the victim’s family said.

The decision in Staten Island not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo threatened to add to the tensions that have simmered in the city since the July 17 death of Eric Garner – a case that sparked outrage and drew comparisons to the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.