In the Media

De Blasio Backs Revised Right to Know Act

12/12/2017
WNYC

Mayor de Blasio reversed course on Tuesday saying he now supports legislation that promotes greater police accountability. The Right to Know Act includes two bills — one that requires police to identify themselves, and another that requires a person's consent before certain police searches.

Until now, the mayor and the NYPD opposed the bills, arguing the department had already addressed these issues by changing their own policies.

No Longer at the Mayor’s Flank, Mark-Viverito Charts a New Path

12/10/2017
New York Times

When Melissa Mark-Viverito was elected as City Council speaker, some feared that her loyalty to Mayor Bill de Blasio would curtail her independence and influence.

After all, it was Mr. de Blasio who helped engineer her victory so that he could have an ally at the helm of the lawmaking body.

While four years of relative comity have followed between the Council and Mr. de Blasio, Ms. Mark-Viverito, who leaves office at the end of the month, converted many of her doubters by standing up to the mayor when it counted.

Demonstrators protest acquittal of NYPD cop in Delrawn Small slay

11/09/2017
New York Daily News

With NYPD officers looking on, more than 100 people gathered on a Manhattan street corner to protest the acquittal of a cop cleared in the road rage shooting death of a Brooklyn father.

Demonstrators in Union Square said a jury put Officer Wayne Isaacs above the law when they failed to hold him responsible for the July 4, 2016 slaying of motorist Delrawn Small, who was killed in East New York after a clash with the off-duty officer.

Road Rage, Then a Shot. For a Police Officer, It is Called Self-Defense

11/09/2017
New York Times

Over the course of two days in early July of last year, three black men, each of them under 40, were killed by police officers in different parts of the country — Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La.; Philando Castile, outside of St. Paul, and Delrawn Small, in a case that drew far less national attention, in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn.

Pics appear to dispute ‘road rage’ cop’s self-defense claim

10/28/2017
New York Post

Brooklyn jurors on Friday were shown hospital photos taken of an off-duty cop just after he fatally gunned down an unarmed driver in a road-rage incident — and the images appear to contradict his claim of self-defense.

The portrait-style and full-body photos of Officer Wayne Isaacs wearing a stripped white golf shirt were taken by now-retired NYPD crime-scene Detective Vincent Falsitta at Jamaica Hospital at 1:30 a.m. — about an hour and a half after the East New York shooting on July 4, 2016.

NYPD cop who killed Delrawn Small didn't look injured: testimony

10/27/2017
New York Daily News

An off-duty NYPD officer who gunned down a Brooklyn father in what he claims was self-defense during a road rage encounter did not have any visible injuries to his face, according to trial testimony Friday.

Officer Wayne Isaacs told detectives and a 911 operator on July 4, 2016, that he shot Delrawn Small three times after he was punched in the face while at a red light on the corner of Atlantic Ave. and Bradford St. in East New York.

Isaacs, who was driving home about midnight after his shift at the 79th Precinct, had cut off Small’s car.

Delrawn Small's stepdaughter recounts moment cop shot him

10/26/2017
New York Daily News

A Brooklyn teen broke down crying Thursday while describing the horrifying scene after an off-duty NYPD cop opened fire on her stepdad in a lethal road rage attack.

The sound of her own voice on a 911 call left 15-year-old Zaniah Isaacs in tears in the murder trial of Wayne Isaacs, who was headed home from the 79th Precinct on the Fourth of July last year.

Shocking 911 calls from off-duty cop’s ‘road rage’ shooting released

10/26/2017
New York Post

Jurors in the trial of an NYPD officer accused of fatally shooting an unarmed man during a traffic dispute have now heard the cop’s 911 call — where he neglected to mention he’d just shot someone.

Officer Wayne Isaacs can be heard in the call, placed at 12:05 a.m. on July 4, 2016, telling the dispatcher he’s been attacked — as Delrawn Small bleeds to death on the sidewalk nearby.
“Oh my God!” Small’s girlfriend Zaquanna Albert — who witnessed the shooting — can be heard screaming in the background of the call, as Isaacs tells the dispatcher “it’s an emergency.”

Right to Know Act backers demand sponsors force vote on bills

10/25/2017
New York Daily News

Backers of a pair of hotly contested police reform bills are demanding their sponsors force a vote on the legislation in the next three weeks.

Advocates pushed Councilmen Ritchie Torres and Antonio Reynoso, the chief sponsors of the Right to Know Act, to use a tactic called a motion to discharge to force it to the floor by Nov. 16.

“We cannot wait any longer,” said Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner, who was killed by a police chokehold on Staten Island. “We need them to discharge these bills, and then we need them passed. And we can’t take no for an answer.”

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