One officer killed and one in critical condition after domestic disturbance in Harlem

Two young police officers responded to a domestic disturbance call Friday night. The woman caller had been fighting with her adult son. When police went to talk to him he opened fire, killing one officer and seriously wounding the second.

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The police initially reported that both officers had been killed, but later said one was in critical condition at Harlem Hospital. The police said the officer who was killed was Jason Rivera, 22, who joined the department in November 2020. The critically injured officer was identified as Wilbert Mora, 27; he joined the department in 2018.

The gunman, identified by the police as Lashawn McNeil, 47, was shot in the arm and head by a third officer who was at the scene of the confrontation, an apartment on West 135th Street near Lenox Avenue, officials said. He survived but was in critical condition, the police said…

Around 6:30 p.m. on Friday, three officers from the 32nd Precinct answered a 911 call from a woman who said she was fighting with her son. When the officers arrived at the apartment, they were met by the woman and a second son. There was no indication from the 911 call, officials said, that there were weapons in the apartment.

The woman told the officers that the son she had been fighting with was in a back bedroom at the end of a long, narrow hallway. As officers Mora and Rivera approached the bedroom, the door swung open and Mr. McNeil began firing. After shooting the two officers, Mr. McNeil tried to leave the apartment and was shot by the third officer, whose name has not been released.

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Lashawn McNeil has a record of drug arrests in several states but apparently hasn’t been arrested in the last decade (that or his record has been sealed for some reason). But the gun used in the shooting had been stolen in Baltimore back in 2017 and included a 40-round magazine extender.

Mayor Eric Adams spoke to a huge crowd of NYPD officers and press at Harlem hospital last night.

Some outlets are reporting that these shootings present a challenge to Adams to deliver on his promise to reduce violent crime in the city. That’s true I guess but I think it also helps remind New Yorkers that they definitely elected the best candidate in the last election, i.e. someone who is focused on crime as the major issue facing the city right now. Thank goodness the city didn’t elect another far left mayor blathering about the need to defund the police.

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The shootings last night were actually the 3rd and 4th shootings of NYPD officers this week. Tuesday an officer was shot in the leg by a 16-year-old (who also managed to shoot himself).

At around 9:30 p.m., a group of six uniformed officers in two unmarked police cars were patrolling near Lorillard Place and East 187th Street in the Belmont section. The area is close to the Little Italy neighborhood known for the shops and restaurants that line Arthur Avenue.

Noticing a loud group of about a half-dozen people gathered outside a building that the police consider a locus of drug and gang activity, the officers approached. As they did, the 16-year-old suspect shoved his hands in his pockets and moved toward a car parked nearby.

The officers told the teenager to take his hands out of his pockets, and he refused. After he ignored several more orders to show his hands, one of the officers began to scuffle with him. In the skirmish, the gun went off once, with the bullet striking the teenager in his groin and then hitting the officer in the right leg below the knee.

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And on Thursday a detective was also shot in the leg.

The shooting occurred at around 6 a.m. as narcotics officers executed a search warrant at the home in the New Springville neighborhood, the police said.

After the officers walked up a stairwell at the address, on Rockne Street near Nome Avenue, a man fired “numerous shots” at them from another room, Keechant Sewell, the police commissioner, said at a news conference on Thursday. The police returned fire and shot him, officials said.

Last year, 61 police officers were shot and killed in the line of duty, a 36% jump from 2020. That doesn’t include officers who were stabbed, beaten to death or killed when they were struck by cars.

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