NYPD officers shot and killed a man who threatened them and moved quickly toward them with a knife on a cable above the Brooklyn Bridge early Friday morning, according to department officials.
It’s the second time this week that officers shot and killed someone with a knife in a highly public and busy part of the city.
According to Assistant Chief Gerard Dowling, officers from the Emergency Service Unit responded to a 911 from someone who reported seeing a man walking on the Brooklyn Bridge’s cables around 3:30 a.m.
When they arrived, officers climbed onto the cables with special harnesses, and attempted to convince the man to come down, Dowling said at a press conference Friday morning.
“The officers on the bridge engaged in a verbal dialogue with the male for almost an hour, explaining they were there to help and to try to convince him to come safely down the bridge,” he said. “They observed that the man was holding a knife, and he stated to them, ‘I want to die. I want you to kill me. I have a bomb. You’re going to make me do something bad to the cops.’”
The officers continued to try to convince the man to get off the bridge safely, and also told him multiple times to drop the knife, Dowling said. At that point, suspended “hundreds of feet above the East River,” the man quickly started to climb down toward the officers, Dowling said.
Because of their harness configuration, they were all clipped onto the bridge in a line, below the man on the same cable, Dowling said. They started to move backward, but could not move as quickly as the man, he said.
“When the male got within approximately three feet from the closest member of ESU, he raised his arm with the knife extended outwards toward the officer,” Dowling said.
At that point, he said, a member of the ESU who was on the roadbed of the bridge fired once, hitting the man. The officers took him down from the cable and started rendering aid, Dowling said. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Dowling said police recovered a knife and a flashlight at the scene, and were still investigating to see if he’d left anything else behind.
He said the ESU officers “are specially trained” for high-risk rescues, and “receive extensive instruction on de-escalation and how to engage with individuals compassionately.”
The incident is under investigation by the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division, and officials have not yet publicly identified the man. The Brooklyn Bridge was fully reopened after widespread closures early Friday morning, according to police.
The shooting comes just days after police shot and killed Pamela Cisneros in Times Square on Monday, after, authorities say, she fatally stabbed a 32-year-old woman and injured a 68-year-old man. Video posted to social media shows that officers attempted to deploy tasers, but shot her moments later after Cisneros charged at them with two knives.
New York law requires the Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigations to assess any incident where a person is killed by a member of law enforcement.
