Joel Polanco -NYTimes.
Posted on 10/06/2012 5:58:50 PM PDT by Lancey Howard
Detective Hassan Hamdy made the split-second decision to fire a single fatal shot at an unarmed motorist during an early morning traffic stop on a highway in Queens because he thought the driver was reaching for a gun, according to the detective’s lawyer.
The driver, Noel Polanco, 22, did not comply with Detective Hamdy’s orders to put his hands up, instead reaching “down in a quick motion, down on the floor of the car,” said lawyer Philip Karasyk, representing the detective.
Detective Hamdy twice yelled “Police!” and was wearing a heavy vest with the word “police” written across it, Mr. Karasyk said. “At that point my guy fires, thinking he has a gun,” Mr. Karasyk said in an interview Saturday night. “If this guy had kept his hands up or on the wheel, we wouldn’t be here. Had not for this person reaching down, lunging for the floor and not complying with orders to show his hands, we wouldn’t be here.”
(snip)
Mr. Polanco was driving on the Grand Central Parkway just after 5 a.m. on Thursday when he was pulled over by uniformed members of the Police Department’s Emergency Service Unit, who were riding in unmarked vans. They said that he had twice cut them off.
Mr. Karasyk said officers activated lights and sirens and yelled at Mr. Polanco to pull over, but he sped up and continued driving, which escalated the officers’ level of alertness.
“He was a danger to other motorists on the road,” Mr. Karasyk said. "They actually had to box him in and pull him over.”
(snip)
Toxicology tests, administered after the shooting, showed no drugs or alcohol in Detective Hamdy’s system, police said.
“He is a squared-away guy. He doesn’t drink. He takes no drugs. He is on no medications whatsoever,” Mr. Karasyk said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com ...
The cop gets as much benefit of doubt as john Q. Public does.
Actually history shows they as a whole deserve less.
Why was only one round fired? If the cop truly thought there was a threat he should have kept firing.
Why were the cops approaching a traffic stop with their guns drawn?
It seems like Islamic Terrorism by NYPD !Tourism should end until Kelly fires these terrorists.
If it had been the cop who died, there would have been no thread on FR.
It amazes me how many there are. The cop is always the power-mad brazen killer and the dead "victim" is always the good guy who wuzzint doin nuttin. Every single time. They believe the liberal Democrat newspapers who have acccess ONLY to the dead guys and their families along with alleged neighborhood "witnesses" who always claim the dead guy wuzzint doin nuttin.
That is an excellent point.
Bingo all these people defending these cops on freerepublic are getting boring. All we read anymore is a cop shot a dog, a cop shot a old man because they got the wrong house in a raid. Cop shoots teenager for reaching under his seat. People who call us police haters are just police enablers.
The victim Noel Polanco served in the military. Additionally, there was an off-duty copy in the back seat of Polanco’s car who initially confirmed what the passenger, Diane Deferrari, has been saying - namely that the Polanco had his hands on the steering wheel when he was shot. Now the off-duty copy has changed her story and is apparently saying she was asleep when Polanco was shot.
We all hope so, too. Just teach her to keep her hands visible and follow instructions, and she will be fine.
I'm not a LEO, but, if some punk who had already threatened me (with his vehicle) pulled a "go for it" move like that, my reaction would quite possibly have been deadly, too...
Now it may be the po-po's.
What was it...”police road rage” or “police ‘roid rage”?
My first thought was that he was probably just stashing his drugs under the seat and out of sight, just like any fleeing, speeding, reckless driver would if he finally got boxed in by lights-flashing, sirens-blaring cop vans and forced to pull over at 5:00 in the morning. I mean, sheesh... He gets shot for that?
Amazes me how so called conservatives will excuse the abuses of power time after time.
I don’t know that the cop said anything but when i am stopped I shut the car off, roll down the window and stick both hands out in plain sight
i am not a cop hater. i do believe that “cops” should be under the same laws as anyone else.
you kill someone that has both his hands on the steering wheel without a weapon with several other “peace officers” around him that didn’t see a threat, should cause a pause.
watching andy griffith show when i was but a child, he was a “peace officer”.
now we have “law enforcement officers”. that has benefited us immensely.
murder is murder even if a law enforcement officer does it.
of course, anybody in the government should be exempt from laws imposed on us common citizens.
blessings, bobo
This sounds like an assassination or terrorism under color of law. shot the un-armed driver from the passenger side window.
Joel Polanco -NYTimes.
Actually, it sounds like the killer and the victim deserve each other.
And the cop groupies.
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