Four New York City police officers were suspended on Thursday for standing by and taking no action after a shooting that happened Monday night in the Harlem neighborhood of the city.
The officers were suspended without pay, an NYPD spokesperson told Newsweek on Thursday without disclosing further details or comments.
Video surveillance obtained by the Daily News shows two officers on foot patrol and two others sitting in a patrol vehicle as several men were standing on the sidewalk.
The officers were reportedly on a "crime reduction" duty, according to the Daily News, in which they were watching the men drink and gamble when a gun went off, apparently hitting one of the men in the leg.
On the video, the group disperses after the gun is fired, and one man appears to have shot himself in the leg.
Two of the officers were standing steps away from the shooting incident as they leaned up against a building. Two other cops who were sitting in the patrol car did not get out to check the scene. Instead, they reversed their NYPD SUV to allow one of the people from the shooting scene get into their car and drive away.
Later, the men came back, retrieved their belongings and left the gun in the middle of the sidewalk, according to the Daily News.
A couple of minutes later, the officers reported the shooting as a fireworks incident and asked for a supervisor to arrive at the scene.
The police investigated if someone was actually shot or if the gun only went off, scaring the group of men away.
During the day on Thursday, a verbal dispute in the city's Bronx borough ended in gunfire. A video of the incident was posted to Twitter by the NYPD News account on August 25.
The video shows a man running down a street as two other people chase him. One person chasing the man can be seen brandishing a firearm and aiming it at the victim, who attempts to run away. The victim then falls behind a car while the suspected shooter moves closer and fires the weapon at the victim again. The two people later flee the scene, while the victim remains lying on the sidewalk behind the parked car.
A spokesperson for the NYPD told Newsweek that the shooting occurred on August 21, at around 6:17 a.m. local time and that the victim was a 32-year-old male.
About the writer
Fatma Khaled is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in New York City. Her focus is reporting on U.S. politics, world ... Read more
