Suspect in NYPD officer shooting held without bail

A suspect is in custody and NYPD Officer Brian Moore is in critical condition after being shot on a Queens street, in an unarmed patrol vehicle.

|
Reuters
This was the scene where a plainclothes NYPD officer was shot in the head Saturday night in Queens.

A man accused of shooting a New York City police officer in the head was ordered held without bail Sunday on charges including attempted murder.

Demetrius Blackwell appeared in court for his arraignment in a torn jumpsuit with his hands cuffed behind his back and legs shackled.

He was arrested Saturday night in the shooting of Officer Brian Moore, who remained hospitalized in critical but stable condition after hours of surgery.

At the arraignment, the 35-year-old suspect did not enter a plea. He is due back in court Friday.

Officials said Moore was shot on a Queens street after he and his patrol partner — in an unmarked police car — pulled up to a man adjusting his waistband in a suspicious way, police Commissioner William Bratton said.

The officers ordered Blackwell to stop and exchanged words with him, but prosecutors say he turned suddenly and fired at least twice, striking Moore. His partner, Officer Erik Jansen, was not hit and radioed for help.

"They did not have an opportunity to get out and return fire," the commissioner said at a news conference Saturday night at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center with Mayor Bill de Blasio and other officials.

After the shooting, witnesses described Blackwell to responding officers and pointed them in the direction he ran, Bratton said. Officers searched house by house and some could be seen walking on roofs as helicopters flew overhead.

Police arrested Blackwell near the crime scene in a house on the block where he lives, officials said.

Blackwell's court-appointed lawyer said after the arraignment that his client was arrested at a house near the shooting site without a warrant and that "the arrest may be illegal."

A police spokesman did not immediately return a call requesting comment about the warrant.

De Blasio said the shooting was a painful reminder of the risks officers take every day.

"Our hearts are with his family, his loved ones," the mayor said. "Our hearts are with his extended family, the men and women of the NYPD."

Moore, who comes from a family of police officers, has been on the job since July 2010.

Moore's listed address is a small, well-kept house in the Long Island hamlet of Massapequa — a tight-knit community where neighbors have known each other well for decades. Many families have relatives who are police officers.

Neighbors had only kind words for Moore, some saying they shed tears after hearing he was shot.

The attack instantly evoked fears of the December slayings of two uniformed officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, as they sat in their patrol cars in Brooklyn. The shooter had posted online that he was seeking retribution against officers for the death of Eric Garner in an apparent chokehold by police.

Bratton said Blackwell has a criminal record that includes a weapons possession charge, but the suspect made no such anti-police postings and was being pursued by the anti-crime officers because of his behavior.

Neighbors near the scene of the shooting were surprised by the shooting and described the residential area with many two- and three-family homes as quiet and safe.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Suspect in NYPD officer shooting held without bail
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2015/0503/Suspect-in-NYPD-officer-shooting-held-without-bail
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe