Citywide officials at odds with Eric Adams over NYPD subway shooting footage: ‘Not a single shot needed to be fired’

New York City Mayor Eric Adams has continued to defend the New York City Police Department officers who shot four people at a Brooklyn L train subway stop over a week ago. But after watching the body camera and security camera footage released by the NYPD, New York City’s two other citywide elected officials have concluded that Derrell Mickles did not pose an immediate threat to the officers at the time they opened fire on him. Two City Council members who represent East New York and Brownsville, where the shooting happened, strongly concur with Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Comptroller Brad Lander. The shooting injured four, including one of the officers and two bystanders, one of whom suffered serious brain damage. 

Before the NYPD footage was released on Friday evening, Adams said the officers, Edmund Mays and Alex Wong, showed “a great level of restraint.” Mays fired three shots, and Wong fired six shots, according to the NYPD.

The NYPD footage shows the two officers begin firing while Mickles is standing still. The officers’ shots ended up hitting two bystanders, one of the officers and Mickles. One of the bystanders, Gregory Delpeche, was shot in the head and has brain damage. The other bystander, Kerry Gahalal, who NYPD initially claimed was only “grazed,” told The New York Times through her attorney that she has a bullet stuck in her leg and can’t walk.

Body cam footage shows Mickles entering a train after being pursued by the officers. Footage shows Mickles is holding a knife. The officers shoot Mickles with two ineffective tasers inside the train car, and Mickles backs out of the train back onto the platform. Back on the platform, Mickles begins to walk away in the direction of the entrance that he came in, while pulling out the ineffective tasers. When Mays cuts him off by exiting a different train door, Mickles runs toward Mays for about three seconds, with Mays jogging backwards and Wong pursuing the two from behind. Mickles then stops and stands still. Both officers have their guns drawn, pointed at Mickles. After between one and two seconds of Mickles standing still, with his hands by his side (knife in one hand), officers open fire.

Williams said he acknowledged part of the video showed Mickles “lunge” toward an officer, but said “to make it seem like that was the time when he was shot is disingenuous.” Lander, who is running against Adams for mayor, said he does not think Mickles “was presenting a danger to the officers or to other New Yorkers.”

“At the moment when the officers shoot four people, the individual they're shooting at is not moving forward at them and is not in the immediate vicinity of anyone else,” Lander said.

Williams said "not a single shot needed to be fired at the moment officers fired into a train with people in it” and that officers “did show restraint until they didn't.”

Williams joined local City Council Members Sandy Nurse and Chris Banks in calling for the officers involved to face discipline. “Can you imagine the family of Mr. Delpeche, laying in a hospital, or the woman who has to go to rehab because she was shot, or the family of the officer who was shot, just hearing simply the mayor saying ‘I commend their restraint,’” Williams said in an interview. “That's a completely tone-deaf response to what occurred.”

But when a City & State reporter asked the mayor about the criticism at his weekly press conference on Tuesday, Adams said “those officers did what they were trained to do.” He said he knows about deescalation from working as a transit cop and recalled a situation where he “had to wrestle with someone that had a knife and was trying to stab a passenger.” Adams noted the officers repeatedly commanded Mickles to drop the knife and emphasized that  Mickles ran toward one of the officers.

“It is very easy to look back and look at the video, where you can hit pause, you can hit stop, you can hit delay, you can go and get something out of the kitchen and come back and look at it again,” Adams said. “When you’re looking at it through the comfort of your home and you're able to move at the speeds that you want, that is not real life.”

Williams said he is waiting on a review from the Civilian Complaint Review Board before determining what he thinks disciplinary action should look like, but he said “it should be significant discipline.”

“There was an impatience that occurred, and we just can't allow that to happen, particularly when people can make life and death decisions,” Williams said. “There just seemed to be, at that moment in time, kind of just a complete disregard of the community and the people behind him in that train.”

Lander said “that's bad policing, and four New Yorkers are paying the price, including one officer.”

In written statements, Nurse called for the officers to be “immediately suspended” while Banks called on the mayor to “restore the public's trust by immediately terminating those officers.” 

Lander said he’s waiting for the Civilian Complaint Review Board before deciding if he thinks the officers should face discipline. The independent civilian oversight board investigates cases of police misconduct and has been sidelined under Adams’ administration, according to advocates. Former interim Chair Arva Rice resigned in August. The City reported this week that five vacancies on the 15-person board have hindered its ability to conduct reviews. When the board does make recommendations, the NYPD has made a habit of ignoring them. 

“I understand why the council members don't have confidence there will be accountability here,” Lander said.

Neither City Hall nor the NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Public Information responded to a request for comment in time for publication.