> Police nightmare in NY: shooting fellow officer

> By COLLEEN LONG - 47 minutes ago
>
> NEW YORK (AP) - It's a police officer's nightmare scenario: Confronting 
> someone who appears to be an armed suspect and opening fire, only to 
> discover that person was actually an officer not in uniform.
>
> It's the kind of mistake that haunts a department, opens it to scrutiny, 
> and dominates headlines. While the phenomenon has happened around the 
> country, New York is home to several cases in the past few years.
>
> But friendly fire incidents with police are fairly rare, according to 
> federal statistics, likely a testament to procedures in place in police 
> departments around the country.
>
> "There's an awareness by police departments that this is a very high 
> risk," Jim Cohen, a professor of criminal law at Fordham Law School, said 
> Saturday. "The rules are pounded into these officers in training, and 
> continued training, using their guns when other cops are around."
>
> Late Thursday, Officer Omar J. Edwards, 25, was shot by a fellow officer 
> on a Harlem street while in street clothes. He had just finished his 
> shift, and had his service weapon out, chasing a man who had broken into 
> his car, police said. Three plainclothes officers on routine patrol 
> arrived at the scene and yelled for the two to stop, police said. One 
> officer, Andrew Dunton, opened fire and hit Edwards three times as he 
> turned toward them with his service weapon. It wasn't until medical 
> workers were on scene that it was determined he was a police officer.
>
> Now, investigators are working to determine whether anyone was at fault. 
> Witnesses are being re-interviewed and many questions remain, specifically 
> whether Edwards identified himself as an officer, and whether Dunton's 
> split-second judgment to fire was against department guidelines. The 
> district attorney will likely convene a grand jury to decide whether to 
> file charges against Dunton, as is practice for police-involved shootings. 
> After, he will be interviewed by police. Dunton's attorney had no comment.
>
> But NYPD procedure for officer confrontation places the responsibility on 
> the out-of-uniform officers. They are instructed to drop their weapon, 
> stay still and to obey all directions from the uniformed officers to 
> defuse the tense situation.
>
> In the police academy, officers get weeks of intense training on what they 
> call confrontations with role playing, as well as lectures on the subject. 
> Training continues on the subject when officers leave the academy. After 
> the shooting Thursday, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly switched 
> on-the-job training for officers from courtroom testimony to confronting 
> officers for the month of June.
>
> Procedures on the topic were also recently revamped after the shooting 
> death of Sean Bell, an unarmed man killed on his wedding night in a hail 
> of 50 police bullets.
>
> "We have seen fatal police-involved shootings plummet in recent decades - 
> even as the size of the NYPD increased - because of training and 
> disciplined use of force," said Paul Browne, the New York Police 
> Department's deputy commissioner for public information.
>
> "Department guidelines are neat and clean on paper, not so in the 
> split-second reality of an armed confrontation. Our training is designed 
> to help officers safely navigate through the hazards of the real thing."
>
> According to statistics by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, about 22 
> officers have been killed in accidental shootings in the past decade. The 
> figure includes officers caught in crossfire, mistaken for a suspect and 
> firearm mishaps. It varies from year to year to between one and four 
> officers killed around the country, and doesn't include those injured who 
> survived. But, it's still staggeringly low given the tense and confusing 
> circumstances officers regularly face. The nation's largest police 
> department has about 34,000 officers.
>
> "I think it goes back to context," Cohen said. "You have in law 
> enforcement, which is perhaps different than military, a serious emphasis 
> placed on not killing fellow officers. And that training is universal."
>
> Still, it occurs, and when it does, the sticky issue goes deeper than 
> issues of procedure. The FBI statistics don't specify the race of the 
> officers killed, and many community members and leaders say race is 
> clearly the reason for the accidents. Dunton and the other two officers 
> were white; Edwards was black.
>
> In 2008, a black, off-duty Mount Vernon police officer was killed by a 
> Westchester County policeman while holding a gun on an assault suspect in 
> suburban White Plains. In 2006, a New York City police officer, Eric 
> Hernandez, was shot and killed by an on-duty patrolman who was responding 
> to an attack at a White Castle in the Bronx.
>
> In Providence, Sgt. Cornel Young Jr. was killed in 2000 while he was off 
> duty and trying to break up a fight. He was dressed in baggy jeans, an 
> overcoat and a baseball cap, and carrying a gun. His mother unsuccessfully 
> sued the city. In 2005, an Orlando, Fla., police officer killed a man who 
> had fired a gun outside the Citrus Bowl. The victim was a plainclothes 
> officer working for the University of Central Florida. In 2001, two 
> uniformed officers shot and killed an undercover detective when he trained 
> his gun on a suspected car thief in Oakland, Calif.
>
> On Saturday in Harlem, U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel joined the Rev. Al 
> Sharpton in calling for a federal probe, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg and 
> Kelly met with concerned community members around the city. Edwards' 
> family mourned their son, who always wanted to be a police officer and had 
> two small children and a wife.
>
> "If you become an officer and you have a pistol and you are of color, in 
> or out of uniform, your chances of getting shot down by a police officer 
> are a lot heavier than if you were not of color," Rangel said.
>
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