February 9, 2020Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea: Good morning, everyone. First and foremost, I want to thank the skilled medical professionals and staff here at Lincoln Hospital, doctors to my left, for the top-level care that they always provide us, unfortunately especially this weekend. And that’s the doctors and nurses and everyone at Lincoln Hospital — we are forever in your debt.For the second time in less than 12 hours, members of the New York City Police Department have been targeted specifically and shot, in attempts to murder the very people who work so hard day and night to keep the people of this city safe. The coward from this morning’s shooting is in police custody. He has a lengthy violent criminal history. He was paroled in 2017 for an incident in which an individual in the Bronx was shot, a subsequent carjacking of a female, and then a crash of a car where he engaged in a gunfight with members of the New York City Police Department. That was in 2002. He was convicted of attempted murder and was paroled in 2017.At this time, we are confident that he is the same person who attempted to assassinate our police officers last night. As was the case last night, unfortunately, I am joined here by many people and thank you for your support — elected officials and police employees alike. Again, everything that we will say this morning is preliminary and subject to change as our investigation is still in its very early stages. Before I get into some of the details, Mayor de Blasio will say. A few words.Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you, Commissioner. First of all, I want to say thank God our officers are alive, and thank God that our officers are the caliber of people that they are to handle a situation like this. I want everyone to understand — Sunday morning the 4-1 Precinct, what should have been a quiet time and suddenly an assailant arrives with the intention of assassinating police officers, and opens fire. These officers handled such a horrific situation with heroism, with extraordinary skill. Thank God that each and every one of them will be okay. We have two officers injured. They will be okay in the end. But what happened and the way they handled this horrific situation is a reminder of the caliber of the men and women of the NYPD. But I want to go back to this point — this was an attempt to assassinate police officers. We need to use that word because it was a premeditated effort to kill, and not just to kill other human beings but to kill those who wear a uniform that represents all of us. We have to understand this as a city, as a nation, our entire society has to understand an attack on a police officer is an attack on all of us, it’s an attack on a democratic society, a decent society, and it’s intolerable. And we will not accept it and we will fight back with everything we have because we have to protect not only New Yorkers but everything that we believe in in this city — a place where everyone can live in peace and decency and mutual respect. This individual attempted to destroy that.
Thank God he was stopped by our men and women in uniform. Everyone needs to join with your prayers, with your thoughts for these officers, for their families that are going through so much. Again, just picture yourself on a Sunday morning at work and bullets start flying all around you. This is what we ask of our officers, that they be able to handle anything and everything for us. And I repeat what I had to say last night — anyone who spews hatred at our officers is aiding and abetting this kind of atmosphere, it is not acceptable. You could protest for whatever you believe in but you cannot vilely attack those who are here to protect us. It creates this kind of dynamic.I want to join the Commissioner in thanking everyone at Lincoln Hospital for their extraordinary work. I want to thank all the people in the community who have come out here in support of our officers and a special thank you to our elected officials, Speaker Corey Johnson, D.A. Clark, Borough President Diaz, Assembly Member Crespo, Council Member Salamanca, Council Member Gibson — all of them for being here in support of our officers. Thank you. Commissioner Shea: So just before 8:00 am this morning, less than 12 hours from being here last night, a man walked into the 41st Precinct station house on Longwood Avenue here in the Bronx. Captured on video from within the precinct station house, he immediately pulls out a gun and fires multiple rounds towards the desk area where several uniformed members of the service, in uniform, were present. He walked into an area beside that desk and again fired several rounds at point-blank range directly at uniformed members of the service and a civilian member of the New York City Police Department, striking none in that room. It is only by the grace of God and the heroic actions of those inside the building that took him into custody that we are not talking about police officers murdered inside a New York City police precinct.In this chaos which took seconds to transpire, a male lieutenant was shot one time through his upper left arm — roughly right here — that lieutenant returned fire and the male suspect was not struck. As I said the suspect was quickly taken into custody and the firearm was secured by police. That firearm, which as we worked through the day and night, will now be linked to see if it matches last night’s. It’s a nine-millimeter Sig Sauer. I will point out that this coward immediately lay down but only after he ran out of bullets. Both the police officer and the lieutenant — the police officer last night that was struck in the chin and the neck, and the lieutenant that was struck in the left arm today are expected to fully recover and will be released hopefully sooner more than later. I’m going to turn it over to Lou Turco – Lou from the LBA and then I’ll take some questions when Lou speaks. President Lou Turco, Lieutenants Benevolent Association: Thank you, Commissioner. Real quick, I want to reiterate what the Commissioner and the Mayor said. I want to thank Lincoln Hospital really for the amount of work they put in and what they did for us. I want to thank you. Today is a reminder of what our job is like and the men and women in that 41st Precinct heroically went after this individual not knowing exactly what he was going to do. We were lucky today, lucky last night with two officers sitting in a car, in an RMP, turret lights going. Today, sitting in a station house Sunday morning, individual walks in, and shoots up the place. We are so lucky. If it wasn’t for the men and women of the 41st Precinct this could have been even worse than this. But this is a reminder to the residents of the City of New York, there are people like this out there. He is a career criminal. If he has the audacity to shoot at officers in uniform, guess what he’s doing to civilians of this city — there’s a lot of these people out there. We need to get in front of this criminal justice reform. We need to work together to fix this thing because right now, the City of New York’s residents are in danger because of this. We have to get in front of this. There are a lot of these individuals out there. But thank God today he didn’t take any of our officers out. Thank you.Commissioner Shea: I’ll take some questions.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: There was a woman present in the general area, and the investigation is ongoing.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: He didn’t walk behind the public area. He walked in as people do — and Myles, that’s the balance that we strike. We have to protect our officers in blue and the civilians that work in the precincts but we also want an engaging atmosphere where people engage. People come into our precincts literally every day throughout the day, 365 days a year for a number of activities. So, we will take a look at our policies and procedures and do everything that we can to make sure that we strengthen if necessary.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: That is what’s most frightening about this. This is not a crime gone bad. This is not a liquor store robbery interrupted, that a tragedy erupts from. This is a premeditated assassination attempt. And I said it last night. Just remember these things are not unrelated. We had people marching through the streets of New York City recently. It brings me immediately back to 2014 where we had the same thing right before Ramos and Liu. We have people marching in New York City last week and I condemned it and I condemn it right here again today — using profanities against the Police Department. Everyone should be speaking out against this, and you have to be careful about the words you use whether it’s on social media or on written papers or speaking because words matter and words affect people’s behavior. And here we have New York City police officers, twice in 12 hours, targeted. And again, by the grace of God, that we’re not planning a funeral. Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: No comment. It’s very preliminary in the investigation. The male who is in custody. We are speaking to a woman. I would not describe her as a suspect.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: Very, very preliminary. I’ll just reiterate what I said already. In 2002 he was arrested and convicted for attempted murder and as part of that incident, he shot an individual, he carjacked a woman escaping from it, and in the ensuing flight from that incident in 2002 he crashed the woman’s car that he carjacked, and got into a gun battle with New York City police officers. Since then he has one recorded arrest and he happens to have court in the coming days for that arrest. Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: I’m not going to get into it. It’s very preliminary.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: I’m not going to get into that today. This is about our officer that was just targeted.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: We’ll be — we’ll have further information throughout the day. In terms of additional information, we’ll liaison with DCPI.Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: Sure. Eli? The lieutenant today was roughly 15 years on the force.Supervising Chief Surgeon Eli Kleinman, NYPD: Both of the officers are recovering and they are doing very well and respect them to have a full recovery. They were very serious injuries last night and today, narrowly missing vital structures in both the neck and in the arm, respectively. But we expect them to make a full recovery. Thank you.Commissioner Shea: We’ll just finish up. Any last questions?Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: Well, specifically with last night’s incident, that’s part of the investigation going forward. It is hours since that incident took place. We know that bullets were fired at the marked police van last night, some penetrated that vehicle. It’s — I’m not prepared to say at this point if any struck that bullet proof glass. But we’ll be looking at that going forward. Question: [Inaudible] Commissioner Shea: Yes, we do. Thank you very much.