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In Quick Response, de Blasio Calls Fatal Shooting of Mentally Ill Woman ‘Unacceptable’ | In Quick Response, de Blasio Calls Fatal Shooting of Mentally Ill Woman ‘Unacceptable’ |
(about 2 hours later) | |
Deborah Danner’s essay recounted her long, aching struggle with schizophrenia, a battle that had begun some 30 years earlier. | |
Filed away last year by a lawyer who had been helping Ms. Danner, the neatly typed, six-page composition depicted a disturbing roll of memories, like the early morning spent roaming the streets of New York City with a knife, searching for a place to end her own life. | |
And at one point, Ms. Danner described the fate that seemed to often befall people like her. “We are all aware of the all too frequent news stories about the mentally ill who come up against law enforcement instead of mental health professionals,” she wrote, “and end up dead.” | |
On Tuesday, Ms. Danner, 66, was fatally shot by a police sergeant in her Bronx apartment in a confrontation that was condemned in swift and striking terms by Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill. | |
Both the mayor and the commissioner said the officer had failed to follow the Police Department’s protocol for dealing with an emotionally disturbed person. | Both the mayor and the commissioner said the officer had failed to follow the Police Department’s protocol for dealing with an emotionally disturbed person. |
“What is clear in this one instance: We failed,” Mr. O’Neill said of the shooting. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, called it “tragic and unacceptable.” | “What is clear in this one instance: We failed,” Mr. O’Neill said of the shooting. Mr. de Blasio, a Democrat, called it “tragic and unacceptable.” |
The two men pledged a thorough investigation, and even as the inquiry was still in its earliest stages, the department took disciplinary action against the officer, Sgt. Hugh Barry, stripping him of his gun and badge and placing him on modified duty less than six hours after Ms. Danner was killed. | |
The fatal shooting recalled the 1984 death of Eleanor Bumpurs, another mentally ill woman killed by the police during a confrontation in her Bronx apartment building. It was a tumultuous episode for the city. Ms. Danner, in her essay, alluded to the death of Ms. Bumpers, which led to changes in how the police respond to emotionally disturbed people. | |
But more than three decades later, such encounters remain one of the most vexing and volatile parts of policing in New York and across the country. | |
Just as the Bumpurs killing prompted outrage and protests, this killing, too, has aroused anger among ordinary people and elected officials alike. On Wednesday night, a group of demonstrators marched from the apartment building in the Castle Hill neighborhood where Ms. Danner was killed toward the station house of the 43rd Precinct. | |
One man held a sign that read, “Stop Police Terror.” Two women held yellow signs on sticks that read, “Justice for Deborah Danner.” | One man held a sign that read, “Stop Police Terror.” Two women held yellow signs on sticks that read, “Justice for Deborah Danner.” |
The killing of Ms. Danner, who was black, comes amid a continuing national debate about policing and the use of deadly force by officers, particularly in encounters with black people. | |
The confrontation that left Ms. Danner dead began with a 911 call at 6:05 p.m. on Tuesday from a neighbor, who reported that Ms. Danner was acting erratically. It was not the first time the police had been summoned to the building at 630 Pugsley Avenue to deal with her, and initially it appeared that the episode inside her seventh-floor apartment would end peacefully. | |
Sergeant Barry persuaded her to put down a pair of scissors she was holding in her bedroom, according to initial police accounts. But then, according to those same accounts, Ms. Danner picked up a baseball bat and tried to swing at Sergeant Barry. He fired twice, fatally wounding her, the police said. Several other officers were at the scene, but none of them, except Sergeant Barry, were in the bedroom. | |
In faulting the officer’s actions, Mr. de Blasio said Sergeant Barry should have waited for more specialized officers, from the department’s elite Emergency Service Unit, to arrive. The mayor also noted that Sergeant Barry was equipped with a stun gun that he could have used to try to subdue Ms. Danner. | |
“There was an opportunity to slow things down here and wait to get everything set up the right way,” Mr. de Blasio said. | “There was an opportunity to slow things down here and wait to get everything set up the right way,” Mr. de Blasio said. |
New York City has begun providing its rank-and-file officers with more advanced training on dealing with people with mental illness. But the training, begun last year, has reached only about 4,400 of the Police Department’s roughly 36,000 officers, and Sergeant Barry had not yet done the four-day training regimen. Known as Crisis Intervention Training, the program has been used for years in many other police departments in the United States. | |
According to the mayor, Ms. Danner’s behavior had drawn the attention of the police before, one of the more than 100,000 calls about emotionally disturbed people that the department responds to every year. The police have responded to more than 128,000 such calls in 2016. | |
Ed Mullins, the president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, the union that represents Sergeant Barry, said he opened fire only after Ms. Danner swung the bat at his head, “fearing for his own life, as well as the lives of others.” | |
Mr. Mullins criticized Mr. O’Neill’s response to the shooting, and said it was motivated by “political expediency.” | Mr. Mullins criticized Mr. O’Neill’s response to the shooting, and said it was motivated by “political expediency.” |
“By making such a blanket statement so early on in an investigation,” Mr. Mullins said, “Commissioner O’Neill was, in essence, denying due process by supplanting public opinion and putting an expectation of results in the minds of the people who will ultimately investigate the case.” | “By making such a blanket statement so early on in an investigation,” Mr. Mullins said, “Commissioner O’Neill was, in essence, denying due process by supplanting public opinion and putting an expectation of results in the minds of the people who will ultimately investigate the case.” |
The encounter between Ms. Danner and Sergeant Barry lasted about 15 to 20 minutes, and the shooting occurred in close quarters, the police said. | The encounter between Ms. Danner and Sergeant Barry lasted about 15 to 20 minutes, and the shooting occurred in close quarters, the police said. |
The police did not release an image of the bat or the scissors that the initial accounts described Ms. Danner as having used. Typically when officers shoot someone, the department releases photographs of the weapon the police say the person had. | |
Ms. Danner’s sister, Jennifer Danner, joined several elected officials, including the Bronx borough president, Ruben Diaz Jr., and the City Council speaker, Melissa Mark-Viverito, both Democrats, in calling for an inquiry by the New York attorney general. | |
Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said the office would review the shooting to determine whether it fell under its jurisdiction to investigate the deaths of civilians killed by law enforcement officers, a power created in 2015 by an executive order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in the aftermath of a grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in Eric Garner’s death. | |
Wallace Cooke Jr., a former police officer, said he was a cousin of Ms. Danner’s mother. | Wallace Cooke Jr., a former police officer, said he was a cousin of Ms. Danner’s mother. |
“I resent her being dead this morning,” Mr. Cooke said. “It’s totally unnecessary to kill a mentally ill person.” | |
Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, “It is hard to imagine why five officers and a patrol sergeant would need to use deadly force to disarm an elderly woman with a baseball bat.” | |
Mr. de Blasio said Ms. Danner’s sister told him that she had been in the hallway of the apartment building, hoping to bring her to a doctor, as the encounter with the police unfolded. | |
She told him that “there had been several other times when the N.Y.P.D. was called to that building,” the mayor said, adding that “in those other instances the N.Y.P.D. successfully removed Deborah from the apartment and they went off to the hospital.” | |
On Tuesday, it ended very differently — with the sound of the gunshots from inside her sister’s apartment. | |
Charles J. Hargreaves, a lawyer for the state’s Mental Hygiene Legal Service, said he represented Ms. Danner in a case over her guardianship. | Charles J. Hargreaves, a lawyer for the state’s Mental Hygiene Legal Service, said he represented Ms. Danner in a case over her guardianship. |
He said his heart sank when he learned the shooting was at a building on Pugsley Avenue, where he remembered her address was. | |
“When I heard the news I thought, oh my God, it can’t be her,” Mr. Hargreaves said. He recalled the essay she had given him that so poignantly described the challenges of her mental illness, titled “Living With Schizophrenia,” and then reread it. | “When I heard the news I thought, oh my God, it can’t be her,” Mr. Hargreaves said. He recalled the essay she had given him that so poignantly described the challenges of her mental illness, titled “Living With Schizophrenia,” and then reread it. |
“I hadn’t read it in a long time,” he said. “It was even more prescient than I remembered.” | “I hadn’t read it in a long time,” he said. “It was even more prescient than I remembered.” |