New York, Jan 24 (AP): A city grappled with a recent spate of violence was poised to look to a rookie police officer as an inspiration to its immigrant community, as investigators uncovered a domestic dispute. Tried to understand, which left another officer “fighting for his life”.
Funeral services were being finalized for New York City police officer Jason Rivera, as his peers in blue mourned the loss of the 22-year-old man, a gap he described as a “chaotic city”. joined forces to create.
A grim scene unfolded on Sunday with a column of uniformed police officers as well as a row of firefighters leaving the medical examiner’s office carrying the fallen officer on the streets.
Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday, city officials said the funeral was scheduled for Friday.
Rivera and Officer Wilbert Mora were shot Friday night while answering a call about an argument between a woman and her adult son. Police said 27-year-old Mora suffered a serious head injury.
During a Sunday morning appearance on CNN, Mayor Eric Adams insisted “to tackle the underlying issues plaguing our city and what has become a stain on inner cities across our country”.
He said his police force would reform a plainclothes anti-crime unit aimed at removing guns from the streets. The unit was disbanded in 2020 due to concerns caused by shootings and a disproportionate number of complaints.
“That dirty coat of blood with red blood is really what we’re talking about here in New York City, but across America,” Adams said.
The medical examiner ruled out Rivera’s death as a homicide, when an autopsy found he died of gunshot wounds to the head and torso.
Adams said Sunday that Mora, who has been with the NYPD for four years, is in danger. Police said he would be transferred from Harlem Hospital to NYU Langone Medical Center.
“It’s really affected our entire city, if not the entire country. And it’s coming after five officers were shot after shooting an 11-month-old baby in Brooklyn,” the mayor said.
The shootings are the latest in a series of crimes that have rattled the country’s most populous city and the country’s largest police force with 36,000 officers.
In the three weeks after Adams took office, a 19-year-old cashier was shot dead because she worked the late night shift at Burger King, a woman was pushed to her death in a subway station, And one child was seriously injured after being shot by a stray in a car parked with his mother. With the Harlem shooting on Friday night, four police officers were shot in as many days.
Police say the shots fired on Friday also seriously injured 47-year-old Lashon Jay McNeil and was taken to hospital.
Details about the cause of the fatal collision were still being revealed.
Officials said a woman who made the emergency call on Friday said she was sick and that her son, who had come to care for her, had become “problematic”. Adams said the woman did not report the problem.
The three officers went to the apartment after receiving the call, officials said. Officers spoke to the woman and another son, but there was no mention of the weapon, police said.
Rivera and Mora walked from the front of the apartment down a narrow hallway to investigate McNeill, opened the door to a bedroom and began shooting, police said. Police said the two officers were shot before drawing weapons and defending themselves.
As McNeil tried to escape, a third officer who had stayed in front of the apartment with McNeil’s mother shot at McNeill and wounded him in the head and arm, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said.
McNeil was convicted of drug abuse in 2003 in New York City. He had also made several out-of-state arrests. In 1998, he was arrested in South Carolina on suspicion of illegally possessing a pistol, but records show that the case was later dismissed. Essig said that in 2002, he was arrested in Pennsylvania on suspicion of assaulting a police officer.
McNeill was married, but the pair split about two decades ago, according to Theresa Noah, who is married to the brother of his ex-wife. She said that McNeil had four children from that marriage.
Police said the gun used in Friday’s shooting, a .45-caliber Glock pistol with a high-capacity drum magazine that holds up to 40 additional rounds, was stolen in Baltimore in 2017.
On Sunday, New York Governor Cathy Hochul announced that a multistate task force would meet Wednesday to begin work to stop the flow of illegal guns, which she and Adams blame for gun-related violence.
“So many lives have been lost because of illegal firearms that should never have been on our streets,” she said.
He said more than 50 agencies from nine northeastern states are participating.
Hochul, citing NYPD figures, said there are about 4,500 illegal guns coming out of the state, most of them from southern states that generally have looser gun laws.
Adams, a former NYPD captain, joined the governor in calling for the federal government to do more to round up the stolen guns used in Friday’s shooting.
Rivera joined the army in November 2020.
Growing up in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood, he witnessed tensions with the police, according to a short essay titled “Why I Became a Police Officer,” a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press.
In that essay, Rivera wrote about how he was upset about his brother being stopped and searched. But his perspective changed when he also saw how the department was trying to improve relations with communities.
“I realized how influential my role as a police officer would be in this chaotic city,” he wrote. (AP) RC
(This story has been published as part of an auto-generated Syndicate wire feed. Headline or body have not been edited by ABP Live.)
,