By Karen Matthews, Associated Press
Video from cameras worn by New York City police officers involved in a fatal friendly fire shooting shows a chaotic nighttime scene as officers struggled with an armed man on the grounds of a Bronx housing project before shots rang out.
The video footage released by the New York Police Department on Friday shows Officer Brian Mulkeen grappling with Antonio Williams on Sept. 29 and shouting frantically, “He’s reaching for it! He’s reaching for it!” A barrage of gunshots can then be heard.
Police have said that a total of six officers fired 15 shots during the confrontation that left both Mulkeen and Williams dead.
Police said a loaded .32-caliber revolver belonging to the 27-year-old Williams recovered at the scene had not been fired. Police officials have not said whose shots killed Williams or Mulkeen, who was 33.
The video backs up the account that police officials gave in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, as it shows the officers firing only after Mulkeen screamed that Williams was reaching for a weapon.
But the footage leaves several questions unanswered including what prompted police to approach Williams and another man at the Edenwald Houses at around 12:30 a.m.
Mulkeen and another officer, Robert Wichers, are seen chasing Williams, who was on probation following a drug arrest, and struggling with him. Mulkeen’s camera was not activated but Wichers is seen firing at close range on footage from his own camera.
Footage from other officers at the scene shows three officers firing from a distance across the grounds of the housing complex.
Police are still investigating the shooting to determine whether the officers who fired acted according to department guidelines.
Members of Williams’ family criticized the police department earlier Friday for not releasing all of the footage.
“The video proves that my brother didn’t cause the death of Officer Mulkeen,” The Daily News reported Williams’ brother, Justin Williams, said. “The NYPD’s hyper-aggressive policing and recklessness murdered my brother Antonio and the officer in a hail of 15 bullets.”
Once again, the “thin blue line” will defend its own misbehavior and questionable practices and try to pin the “crimes” on some innocents.
A recent case in Michigan comes to mind. A Michigan state police “undercover unit” in an unmarked “undercover vehicle” ran a stop sign and broadsided a driver who had the legal right-of way”. The first thing these “police officers” did was to handcuff the driver of the vehicle that they just hit, did not offer medical attention, and stood around, planning what charges they could pin on the driver. The good part of this is that the whole situation was recorded on video and clearly showed that the police officers were in the wrong..
The police officers claimed that they were in a hurry to participate in a “drug bust”.
Once again, the police got away with it…without incurring any charges for their misbehavior.
And here we go, it didn’t take long, first comment and already bashing cops. They shouldn’t have done anything at all then, let well trained heroes like you handle all kind of bs for free, it’s a win win.
It’s because cops think they are above the law you a$$ clown!
Amen to that! I work with LE quite often and only a very few realize that they too are only human and not God’s right hand of justice. To be honest i don’t trust any of the cops in my area. Most are glorified Gestapo.
“To be honest i don’t trust any of the cops in my area. Most are glorified Gestapo”
Well then it sucks to be “in your area”.
Citizens have the right to be armed. Government employees carry arms as a delegated privilege. Disarm the cops for a safer America.
Government employees are citizens, too.
The question is, did we really delegate all those privileges to them, or have they been elevated above the rest of us simply because they’re armed agents of the state?
Also, there’s a big difference between armed government employees with arrest powers and government employees in general. I was a government employee in one capacity or another for almost 20 years before going into the private sector a few months ago, and I forfeited my Second Amendment rights every time I clocked in; they literally could’ve put me in jail for exercising a constitutional right.
Where is the thumbs up button?
Cop bashing at TTAG is pretty mundane. It’s kinda like slingin shit in a pig pen. If you want to be edgy around here, you need to learn to start a fight about vaccines, or go on mindless rants about Trump, or cry constantly about climate change.
It’s tragic that this happened. Talk about terrible training, this is ridiculous. Violates the 4 basic rules, every training program I have seen or participated in, and shows just how terrible most people become in a high stress situation. Condolences to the families involved and hopefully someone frees up some money for regular training.
Do they teach the circular firing squad at the academy, or do they pick that up in OJT?
Mad Magazine I think.
I’m really surprised bystanders and friendlies aren’t hit more often.
So much footage of indiscriminate mag dumps and officers at the rear of en entry team jumping up and down to blind fire over heads into dark rooms. As if, for some, priority one is simply to send bullets in a direction as quickly as possible.
“priority one is simply to send bullets in a direction as quickly as possible.”
Wasn’t that one of the reasons they switched to 9mm? Less recoil and higher capacity.
NYPD has been 9MM ever since they switched from the S&W Model 10 to the Glock17/19, Sig P226(DAO) and one older S&W model. The main problem is with the NY1 trigger. I believe it’s a 12 pounder and tends to pulled shots off-center when rapidly fired. Combine that with too little practice and you have a recipe for disaster.
And if the cops miss and kill a bystander, the perp is charged with their murder, even if he’s flat on the ground. So much for the “Cops are better trained than any CCL holder” statement (usually given by the anti-gunner MomsDemandAction crowd.
Having spent time with many cops over my life…I’ll say this
City VS country cops
the safest place around a city cops firing is RIGHT behind them in most cases! or behind armor!
now country cops….for the most part, they can wing ya with a gun at 1000 yds
its a matter of how they were raised!
I live in a small city (150,000 or so) surrounded by rural areas, and most of the cops here do shoot straight. (The exception seems to be the CHP.) Nonetheless, they are just as prone to mag dumps as any city cop, just with a higher hit ratio.
But what I don’t understand is why they are all are so into mag dumps. Is this from their military training that that is what you do to keep the enemies’ heads down? Is it POST? I have no clue, but it just seem not to make a lot of sense. Any LEO can respond to that question?
What is wrong with the officers training on their own dime. This would a way to get ahead in the department and show the higher ups they are serious. What does the average officer on the street in the NYPD make?
rt, they make good money you can find it on their website, but you also have to take into account the insane cost of living and taxes. Anyway, they should not have to spend a penny for their own training imo, unless they want extra extra training.
If you do productive work, you pay for your own training. Government employees should pay for their own uniforms, training and tools. Do productive work as a mechanic or a carpenter, you provide your own tools or you don’t step foot on the job site. Why should tax payers be forced to arm cops and buy their work clothes?
“”””employees should pay for their own uniforms, training and tools”””
Spoken like a guy who does not need 10,000 100,000 of $$$$$ in tools to do their JOB!!!
damn desk jokey!
how about paying for your own office, desk and computer system and internet??? sounds fair??
Should doctors provide their own imaging equipment, lab equipment, surgical tools, and facilities like hospitals?
Should airmen, sailors and soldiers provide their own APCs, tanks, helicopters, aircraft and aircraft carriers?
@zerofoo
I am a doctor in private practice and am expected to provide my own imaging equipment, lab equipment, surgical tools and facilities in my practice. Likewise I supply my own firearms, ammunition and training on the range. The measly compensation from government funded programs is expected to cover all of that. And, no to the morons in this forum, I never killed anyone nor do I vaccinate anyone in my practice of surgery. I have saved more than a few lives here and there however.
I pay for my own continuation education classes, unlike most government employees. It’s $$-hundreds/year. Want to be good at what you do? Train yourself, educate yourself. There’s no excuse not-to today.
This proves that all you cop bashers are wrong! Cops don’t just shoot bystanders, hostages and random black people. They also shoot each other!
Incompetence turns into racist because the media prefers that narrative.
In our area some years ago a drunken cop ran over a woman who was getting into her car. He then arrested the woman and charged her after he beat her up and broke two of her fingers. Of course the cop got off scott free and of course he never lost his job even though it was proven he was drunk as a skunk. The woman was lucky the cop did not shoot her on the spot and then say “I feared for my life”.
In our town we had a rapist judge who locked women in his office downtown, raped them and made some of the female employees sex slaves. To make one of the women employees a sex slave he sent her boyfriend to jail for decades. He was eventually caught, given a slap on the hands and then after convicted by a corrupt court given “shock probation”. He laughed when released proving that in the corrupt world of Capitalvania there is two systems of justice, one for the power elite and one for the proletariat worker drone troglodyte slaves. So what else is new in Capitalvania.
Do you have sources for these allegations?
He has good sources with Pravda and Izvestia.
In 2017 German Police who get 3 years of intensive training shot and killed only 12 people. In China with 4 1/2 times the U.S.population shot just 4 people. In Capitalvania U.S. Cops gunned down and slaughtered 1,500 people and most got raises at the end of the year. I imagine they also got a gold plaque reading “nice shooten son”.
Keep your head in the sand.
There are alot more people in China who just “disappear” because of criminal or apparent not-towing-the-party-line than are represented in those skewed statistics. How many more are arrested, thrown in jail, and then quietly executed or “committed suicide”? Be careful when you post the-grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side information without knowing more of the background truth. The U.S. may certainly not be perfect, but it is a damn sight better than many other countries around the globe with regard to people’s rights.
How many Chinese were shot by American police?
In China people disappear and are sometimes found years or decades later in forced labor for someone who paid off a party official.
Otherwise you could disappear and be an involuntary organ donor.
In China with 4 1/2 times the U.S.population shot just 4 people
but executed 100,000s or more every year
yaaa better system comrade….please JUST go way
I wonder if that officer refused to go along with some corruption and was executed. Serpico is still in my memory and I’ve seen horrible corruption in the Paedophile Protectorate of Arizona.
15 pound trigger pull keeping cops safe…
150lbs probably would have saved at least one life.
I’m not sure when it happened, but at this point, any time a story is posted on this website pertaining to law enforcement in any nearly any context, one could be forgiven for thinking this a place populated by ANTIFA types.
The police aren’t stopping Antifa from attacking people. They are infact stopping people from defending themselves.
Antifa should be the thin blue line supporters.
But to ANTIFA, the “Pigs” lack political awareness and this makes them unreliable.
Could the guy narrating this have worn a more ill-fitting suit jacket?
This cop and criminal died because one cop didn’t know how to throw a punch or a kick. He could have easily knocked out the guy before he could get free from the hold of the other cop. Instead he screams like he is afraid, slaps the guy a bunch of times, then fires his gun. Not even a taser was ready to go.
It would really suck for the dead guys if the scared cop is the one that killed the fearless cop. It’s more likely the two dumb cops are the one to kill the fearless cop by shooting at him a bunch of times from afar.
Cops are now trained to shoot everyone when they are afraid or they have a legal opportunity. I just watched a bodycam of a cop shooting dead a druggie “armed” with medical tweezers while two other cops were wrestling to “disarm” him. No taser, no kick to the face. Just pull your gun and shoot to kill.
Yet older cops keep pretending there isn’t a generation of cops looking to shoot dead Americans when they have the chance. They have to wait a few years to get a video of a cop doing the proper thing so they can say see I told you not all cops are killers. Cops like Doughnut Operator are some of the worst kind of anti American law enforcement.
Cop…shoot…cop. It’s not just for junkies anymore.
I don’t know if anything has changed, but if not, regular NYPD officers don’t carry tasers which are reserved for supervisors. This idiotic policy was prompted by fears that the police might actually USE tasers if they were issued generally.
Tasers aren’t an answer to every question but they give an option right before a mag-dump that can be VERY useful when you’re struggling with a suspect who may have a weapon.
Of course, vastly better training in firearms and defensive tactics would also be useful but there’s only so much of that you can pack into an academy and in-service when you have to set aside hours to teach ‘community engagement policing’ time every week…
Very sad for Officer Mulkeen. It’s really hard to see the struggle and see what have been done better when they went hands on. Police probably from across the country need to work on coming at a suspect from different directions, communications, and coordinating fire. Lastly, they need to look at marksmanship. If those were targeted shots, why did they hit the wrong target.
One of the biggest things that should be trained is that just because one person shoots doesn’t mean everyone should. ‘Contagious fire’ CAN be trained out using simunitions and other hands-on methods. But those methods are time intensive and more expensive than a powerpoint presentation.
There are consequences for NOT killing a suspect.
https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/11/us/wv-cop-fired-for-not-shooting–lawsuit/index.html
BTW, the cop sued the Weirton, WV police and they had to pay him $175,000 for not killing a suicidal black man. Other officers were thrilled to be add a scalp to their belt. They shot the poor man dead.
I guess there’s no point in having power if you can’t abuse it.
Yeah, there can be consequences for not shooting, as there SHOULD be. If you are incapable of killing someone and you end up putting everyone else at risk because of that, you should expect to be fired. If you are incapable of holding fire when shooting would put everyone else at risk, you should also expect to be fired.
But a PowerPoint presentation never killed anyone who did not need killing.
Correct me if I am wrong. This is the same state whose most populous city is involved in a SCOTUS case that they have tried mooting where the police chief actually stated in a brief to the SCOTUS, “license holders in a public setting are just as susceptible as anyone else to stressful situations, including ones where it would be better to not have the presence of a firearm included.” So the same City who claims that licensed handgun owners are not to be trusted will trust its officers not to shoot innocent bystanders and by analogy “friendly’ officers. I have enough experience in my own community training alongside local LEOs in martial arts and in fire arms to know that when LEOs start firing there is no safe place to stand, not even behind the closest officer. I have posts illustrating this elsewhere.