A mistake is not just a mistake when a gun is involved. That's why most police officers try to err on the side of not firing their weapons.
But as long as there have been armed police officers, there have been questionable shootings.
In the heat of the moment in a dark alley, a harmless household object can appear to an officer to be a deadly weapon. In this week's tragic version of the story, police fired 20 shots at a man armed only with a hairbrush.
A TROUBLED MAN AND 20 POLICE BULLETS IN BROOKLYN
November 14, 2007
By AL BAKER
A troubled 18-year-old man. A furious family argument inside a first-floor Brooklyn apartment. A 911 call. Then, in the darkness, 20 bullets fired by five police officers. The 18-year-old is fatally wounded. The police say he was holding a hairbrush.
These incidents don't happen very often, but since the 1990s they seem to occur with greater frequency.
Ten years ago it was a candy bar in the role of the hairbrush.
AGENT MISTAKES CANDY BAR FOR GUN AND SHOOTS YOUTH
November 8, 1997
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
A 17-year-old high school student was shot and wounded on Thursday by an undercover Federal agent who mistook a foil-wrapped candy bar that the youth was holding for a handgun, officials said yesterday.
The student, Andre Burgess, said he was walking down 138th Street in Laurelton, Queens, about 7 P.M. on Thursday when he passed a car full of undercover law enforcement agents who were searching for a fugitive drug dealer.
According to law-enforcement officials, a Federal agent inside the car saw the silver wrapper of the Three Musketeers bar that Mr. Burgess was carrying and mistook it for the glint of a pistol.
Before that, it was a water gun.
POLICE DEFEND SHOOTING YOUTH HOLDING TOY
August 25th, 1998
By MICHAEL COOPER
Police officials yesterday staunchly defended the shooting of a Brooklyn teen-ager by two officers who mistook his water gun for the real thing, but the youth's distraught family demanded answers about why the officers fired at him 17 times.
Since it is doubtful that police officer eyesight has declined over the past century, there must be some other reason that these incidents appear to be a more recent phenomenon.
One thing that hasn't changed is the uncomfortable role such incidents place the Police Commissioner. Here's one example, in which "two policemen were wounded -- one critically -- and three others were injured, as were at least three civilians."
MURPHY DEFENDS POLICE ACTION AT HARLEM MOSQUE
April 17, 1972
By JAMES MARKHAM
Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy yesterday defended the action of policemen at a Black Muslim mosque in Harlem Friday.
Comments