New York City Police said they detained three men in the shooting last night of two officers following a gunfight and car chase tied to a Bronx store robbery.
The confrontation came more than two weeks after a pair of officers were shot dead in Brooklyn, allegedly by a man who claimed he would retaliate for police killings of unarmed black men in Staten Island and Ferguson, Missouri. Officer Wenjian Liu, 32, and Officer Rafael Ramos, 40, were killed Dec. 20 as they sat in a marked patrol car outside a housing project.
Their deaths led to criticism of Mayor Bill de Blasio by the police labor union and silent protests by officers at the funerals of Ramos and Liu. Union officials claimed de Blasio helped create an atmosphere that led to the shootings by supporting the rights of demonstrators protesting police killings.
Those demonstrations snowballed in New York City after a Staten Island grand jury, like one in Missouri, declined to indict a white police officer for killing an unarmed black man.
Police today noted a significant drop in arrests since the two officers were killed, indicating a possible work slowdown. For the week ending Jan. 4, the department recorded 2,401 arrests, compared with 5,448 for the same period in 2014, and 347 criminal summonses compared with 4,077 last year.
In last night’s shooting, one officer, age 30, was wounded in the arm and back and listed in critical condition, Police Commissioner William Bratton said in a statement. The other, age 38, was shot in the arm and chest and listed as stable.
The officers in the Bronx shooting were part of a five-member plain-clothes team responding to a call about an armed robbery at a grocery store at 363 E. 180th St., Bratton said. They approached two possible suspects near a Chinese restaurant and a gunfight ensued in which at least one suspect may have been shot.
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