Posted on 10/07/2012 6:36:02 AM PDT by Uncle Chip
An NYPD officer yesterday shot and killed an unarmed Army reservist as he went to pick up a drill after they stopped his car.
Noel Polanco, 22, was fired at when he cut off the police car near New York's LaGuardia Airport, after they shouted at him to put his hands up, a witness said.
Passenger Diane DeFerrari insisted Mr Polanco never even took his hands off the wheel and the police had acted out of 'road rage.'
Tragedy: Noel Polanco, 22, was shot dead by a police officer as he drove two passengers home from the bar where he works
Horrified: Passenger Diane DeFerrari, who worked at the Ice Lounge bar with Mr Polanco, said he was not given a chance to put his hands up before police shot him
Officers who had given terrifying chase in an unmarked vehicle screamed, 'Put up your hands!', and then shot Mr Polanco a split-second later, she said.
'It was simultaneous,' she added. 'There was a pop and Noel gasped.'
After the shooting, Ms DeFerrari, 36, said she and a backseat passenger, an off-duty NYPD officer, were ordered out and told to put their hands on the car. 'The cop said, "Your friend just shot himself",' said Ms DeFerrari. 'I didn’t dispute what I saw because I was afraid. They wouldn’t let me look at him.'
The officer riding in Mr Polanco’s car, 29-year-old Vanessa Rodriguez, was waving her police ID out the window just before the shooting, sources said.
Detective Hassam Hamdy insisted he pulled the trigger after Mr Polanco, from Queens, reached down for something that turned out to be a yellow-and-black power drill, a source told the Daily News.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
The strange part here is the shooter(s) are not making a claim that ‘He tried to run us down’ ~ guess they exhausted that one with the Bride Groom shooting several years back.
I am ordinarily slow to take sides when they shoot at each other ~ but this one was on a highway I"ve driven numerous times over the years.
Best they keep their love lives in the parking lots.
Uh, like the school teachers eh!
Here’s another Point of View...
Hmmm: Muslim Cop Shoots And Kills An Unarmed Army Reservist For No Reason?
The detective, Hassan Hamdy, 39, a 14-year veteran assigned to the Emergency Service Unit, fired one bullet through an open window of the car, which his squad had just pulled over with the help of a second police vehicle. The bullet struck the driver, Noel Polanco, 22, in the abdomen. He was declared dead less than an hour later at New York Hospital Queens….
Yep. I posted this on an earlier thread:
Heh, I guess I can easily see the default position you take.
"The Emergency Service Unit also functions as a Special Weapons and Tactical Unit (SWAT) and NYPD hostage negotiators assist and secure the safety of hostages. Members of "ESU" are cross trained in multiple disciplines for police and rescue work."
Either one of their members forgot his training or did as he was trained.
Watch carefully as we will be told that this elite ESU force has not been trained in how to do traffic stops.
Heh, admittedly, that would be my default position. I guess he never watched THIS video: How NOT to get your Ass kicked by The Police
Granted, there isn't any humor in this situation, but it does illustrate the point. Listen, if this was a hit job as some are saying, then this doesn't apply. The bartender (whose word everyone accepts without question (after all, who DOESN'T trust their bartender?) said it went down as "BANG...Put your hands up or I'll shoot!"
Heh, Doesn't every drill have one???
Guy was shot with has hands up and no warning. Bartender said so. Case closed.
That does sound silly indeed.
I just put down my drill about fifteen minutes ago...my default position is usually forward, but it was reversed today...wtf?
Indeed.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/det-hamdy-named-earlier-brutality-lawsuit-article-1.1176119
“Perhaps” is all I intended. Since the guy turned out to be clean, and it would be incredibly stupid to point a drill at the police in the dark, I was looking for a reasonable accidental explanation.
As to the predictable bifurcation of default positions on FR, it is what it is.
I tend to be sympathetic to the police, but I’ve experienced enough occasional bullying and threatening behavior to be very careful, more careful than I think I should have to be.
That was my point.
On this, we agree. Also, in my younger days, I was fairly well paranoid of police, and thought they were out to get me while I was driving. Driving a sports car (if an MG Midget may be categorized as such) and being a young man are two ways you can get on a cop's radar, literally speaking.
Then, I came to the realization they weren't specifically out to get me, they were simply looking for things that stuck out, like someone going faster than the other traffic, driving a car that someone might cross traffic laws with, etc.
But I am not too naive to think that big city cops don't have a huge problem with larger groupings of people, because in those big cities, they deal with crappy people from all walks of life, and I expect it is difficult not to become callous, resulting in bent and broken limitations on their power.
I know...I know!
I will say, from appearances, that detective looks like a “boiling pot” to me. Granted, they probably were snapping his picture when he didn’t want them to, but even so.
The cops had been cut off twice by an erratic driver who then attempted to flle. At 5 in the morning. When he was finally forced to pull over by being “boxed in”, the cops approached the vehicle with apprehension and extreme caution (obviously).
Moments later the driver was shot dead.
In my opinion there are three possible reasons for the shoooting
1. The cop murdered the driver in cold blood in front of a lot of witnesses.
2. The cop fired his weapon unintentionally, perhaps out of nervousness or a hair trigger or some other reason. (And yeah, “another reason” the cop had a tight grip on his weapon could be that the cop was pissed because the driver had cut him off twice on a highway at night, thereby endangering his life and the lives of the other passengers.)
3. The driver continued to act stupidly, and did indeed reach down toward the floor of his dark vehicle as the cop’s weapon was trained on him, at which point the cop fired. (And yeah, maybe the “road enraged” cop just wanted an excuse, any excuse, to shoot the driver. ... And the driver was helpful.)
Regardless of the above possibilities, it was the driver who put himself in a position to suffer this tragedy.
In any event I feel badly for everybody involved.
And then there is this interesting observation from a commenter to this article:
HananJamaica, NY
The account of the NYPD sounds unbelievable. When seated in a car, unless the seat were leaned back in a lounge position, the stomach area is a tight space to have a bullet fired into. The body is in a near 90 degree angle between knees under the steering wheel and the back being upright. Hamdy would have had to have been standing at the front side of the car window near the windshield to shoot someone seated as such in the stomach— from a very specific angle. At this angle, Hamdy would see the chest, shoulders and hands maybe, They may not have been visible if they were on the steering wheel. As described by NYPD, Polanco made a motion reaching down to the floor of the car. Polanco could only move so far and almost any move would have provided more protection for his stomach area reducing the angle to much less than it was in a seated position. Polanco can’t get shot in the stomach if the gun is at the side of the car; there is virtually no angle for this to occur. If Polanco moves, there is less opportunity for a stomach wound. If Polanco’s hands remain on the wheel and he does not move— this provides a logical, measurable angle for a stomach wound to occur. Hamdy’s positioning outside of the door nearly facing Polanco and Polanco’s limited movement appear to be the only way a stomach wound is possible. Until the trial with ALL of the details emerge, the NYPD can say anything. Don’t believe the off-duty officer was asleep through all this! Polanco did not have a chance!
In other words the officer could not have hit Polanco in the abdomen if he had been leaning forward to reach under the seat at the time. It would have had to go into his side not his abdomen. The autopsy and ballistics will be interesting.
That'll be a little hard to claim seeing as they more than likely started out as rookies, and had to do that in their early years with the force. And I'm sure that they all undergo mandatory training and refresher courses every year.
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