Many of the wounds to bystanders were “mostly in the lower extremity areas, such as legs and ankles, which would be consistent with some of the ricochet fragmented ballistics we found,” Mr. Browne said.
Mr. Browne is full of shit.
Please forgive me for the bluntness but could the people on this board complaining about accuracy percentages and/or the appropriateness of the cops firing on a busy street please freakin' WATCH THE VIDEO of the incident before they get all high and mighty. You can not reasonably judge this incident unless you see the most important piece of evidence.
The cops were walking behind the suspect about twenty feet or so and obviously barking out towards the suspect some command to stop since you will notice bystanders turning their heads in the murderer/cops general direction before the murderer pulls out his gun and brandishes it towards the cops while slowly advancing. The three folks sitting on the bench directly in the line of fire all appear to get out of the way in time while so unless someone on the street, and out of the camera's view, were hit and wounded, then clearly any injuries resulting from the cop's shots were a result of ricochets and fragments of items hit/broken. So contrary to the words of the Dailt News that the shooting "...left nine bleeding bystanders sprawled outside the Empire State Building" none of those bystanders can be seen "sprawled" in any footage I have seen. Innocent bystanders were hurt but the fact remains this nut could have shot some of them directly or taken a hostage. The shooting is justified if one only watches the fifteen-second video of the "shootout."
I for one am absolutely happy that not only is the perp dead but the fact that that video hit the internet before being suppressed so that those two cops were not publicly lynched via general speculation. The perp whipped out his gun and the officers had no choice - or duty - to retreat.