New York police department officials have conceded that something went wrong in the lead-up to a sergeant fatally shooting a mentally ill 66-year-old black woman in her own home in the Bronx Tuesday night.
“What is clear in this one instance, we failed,” police chief James O’Neill told reporters Wednesday morning. “That’s not how it’s supposed to go. It’s not how we train.”
The woman, Deborah Danner, had schizophrenia and police had visited her home on prior occasions for disturbances. According to police, they were responding to a call from a neighbor that Danner was acting in an “irrational manner” when the shooting occurred.
Danner was holding a pair of scissors when sergeant Hugh Barry entered her residence, police said. Barry was able to convince Danner to put down the scissors and leave the home with him when she allegedly picked up a bat and began swinging it at the Sergeant’s head.
Barry fired two shots from his service weapon, and Danner was taken to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Police said that Barry was equipped with a less-lethal Taser weapon, which he did not deploy. Barry has been placed on modified duty, and was stripped of his gun and badge while the incident is investigated by the NYPD’s force investigation division.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the shooting “tragic and unacceptable” in a Wednesday evening press conference, adding “it should never have happened. It’s as simple as that: it should never have happened.” The mayor also commended the department for moving quickly to reassign the sergeant.
That move was ridiculed by Barry’s union, the NYPD sergeants benevolent association. President Ed Mullins called the shooting justified and said the decision to strip Barry of his badge was “politically motivated”.
After what his office called a “rigorous review”, New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman announced on Thursday that his office would not be reviewing the shooting, and that it would be left to the Bronx county district attorney to decide whether a crime had been committed. Schneiderman said that because Danner had a weapon, the incident fell outside of his authority to investigate. An executive order signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo after the death of Eric Garner gives the attorney general’s office the responsibly to make determinations about fatal police incidents in cases where the victim is unarmed.
Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr called the incident “all too reminiscent” of the case of Eleanor Bumpurs, a Bronx woman, who like Danner was 66 and dealing with mental health issues, who was killed by NYPD officers in 1984. The officer in that case was charged with manslaughter and eventually acquitted.
“While I certainly understand the hard work our police officers undertake to keep the streets of our city safe every single day, I also know what excessive force looks like,” Diaz said in a statement.
The shooting highlights the danger that people with mental health issues often face when they become involved with police during moments of crisis. The Guardian’s long-term investigation into police killings has found that, nationwide, more than a quarter of all killings involve individuals with mental health issues.
Danner is the seventh person described as “emotionally disturbed” to be killed by NYPD officers in the last three years, according to the New York advocacy group Communities United for Police Reform.
“No person in need of mental health services should end up dying like this,” said Donna Liebman, executive director of the New York ACLU. “The questions raised by such a disproportionate use of force are especially important in a context where across the country people are asking if law enforcement values enough the lives of people of color.”
Danner is the 10th black woman to be killed by police in 2016 and the first since Korryn Gaines was killed by officers in Baltimore in a high-profile August incident.