Last September, NYPD officers opened fire on an unarmed, emotionally disturbed man who was wandering through traffic in Times Square – and ended up shooting two women instead.
The man, Glenn Broadnax,waded into traffic at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue and threw himself into the path of oncoming cars. Officers tried to subdue the man, and after he reached into his pocket, two of the cops opened fire.
The officers, who thought Broadnax was pulling out a gun, missed their target and shot two innocent bystanders.
Broadnax was eventually knocked down with a Taser.
Now Broadnax is being charged with assault based on the theory that he was responsible for the the shooting of the two bystanders, according to an indictment unsealed in State Supreme Court in Manhattan on Wednesday, the NY Times reports:
Initially Mr. Broadnax was arrested on misdemeanor charges of menacing, drug possession and resisting arrest. But the Manhattan district attorney’s office persuaded a grand jury to charge Mr. Broadnax with assault, a felony carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years. Specifically, the nine-count indictment unsealed on Wednesday said Mr. Broadnax “recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death.”
“The defendant is the one that created the situation that injured innocent bystanders,” said an assistant district attorney, Shannon Lucey.
The two police officers have been placed on administrative duty and are under investigation by the District Attorney’s office.
Broadnax’s lawyer, Rigodis Appling, said his client suffers from anxiety and depression and was disoriented and scared when the police shot at him. She said he was reaching for his wallet, not a gun. “Mr. Broadnax never imagined his behavior would ever cause the police to shoot at him,” she said.
Broadnax was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center after his arrest. He told a detective there that “he was talking to dead relatives in his head and that he tried throwing himself in front of cars to kill himself,” according to a court document released on Wednesday.
A court-ordered mental evaluation found Broadnax competent to stand trial.
Sahar Khoshakhlagh, one of the two women who was hit by police fire, doesn’t think Broadnax should be held responsible for her injury. Khoshakhlagh’s attorney, Mariann Wang, said the district attorney should be pursuing charges against the two officers who fired their weapons in a crowd, not against Mr. Broadnax:
“It’s an incredibly unfortunate use of prosecutorial discretion to be prosecuting a man who didn’t even injure my client. It’s the police who injured my client.”
Why didn’t the police just use the Taser on Broadnax in the first place? Why did they think shooting into a crowd was a good idea? And how is an unarmed, mentally ill man responsible for the “shoot now, ask questions
From the article – “recklessly engaged in conduct which created a grave risk of death.”
Funny, pretty much exact description of every police initiated interaction these days. Death of the mundane that is.
Because of these sort of behaviors, if on a jury, I would not convict any mundane who preemptively defended himself by shooting a cop. There is no doubt that the police are now a real and present danger to the public and should be treated as such and dealt with by their own standards of threat/reaction.
Right, I’m with Jean on this one too.
I saw a comment at (I think) The Daily Sheeple; the guy said look, if you’re facing 25 years for doing nothing, you’re single, you’ve got nothing left to lose…kill the fuckers.
In other news, the “we’re not going to take your guns, just register them” crowd in New York has just sent out letters…”turn’em all in, Mr. and Mrs. America”
Let’s see if it gets bloody.
“I saw a comment at (I think) The Daily Sheeple; the guy said look, if you’re facing 25 years for doing nothing, you’re single, you’ve got nothing left to lose…kill the fuckers.”
‘Course he probably has an excuse for not doing any such thing. He’s married, maybe, or he has something left to lose, etc. He’s an internet tough guy or a provocateur, take your pick.
“‘Course he probably has an excuse for not doing any such thing. He’s married, maybe, or he has something left to lose, etc. He’s an internet tough guy or a provocateur, take your pick.”
That is my take on it too. A whole bunch of cowards want to prod the mentally challenged to do their dirty work. The problem of course is that one lone shooter mentality will do nothing to roll the state back, in fact it would do the exact opposite. I hear tough guys all the time talk about lock and load, and pry from my dead cold fingers. What have they done themselves with their carbines, absolutely nothing. And I’m not trying to prod them to do something either. Just trying to get them to admit that if they were such patriotic freedom fighters they’d done something violent along time ago themselves. But thankfully they have enough wisdom (they are married, have a house and kids) not to go out and harm someone, instead they talk all tough snorting and hoofing and doing nothing.
Seriously, anyone that has read how revolutions work understand that it takes a whole populace to “have nothing to lose” before anything meaningfull revolution can take place. It takes a society so pissed and dirt poor and usually stupid too (as violence is usually highly correlated with stupid folk) that a revolution of arms be successfull. Then 9 out of 10 times these same stupid folks make the problem worse by using their violence to achieve the same ends that they wanted through democracy (that is redistribution).
Next time I see a revolutionary agitator he better not expect others to do what he can’t do himself. As I have said Ed we got a paramilitary mindset trained by Hollywood. Everyone thinks they are some wise general and are going to lead the armed resistance to victory. They are legends in their own minds on the imaginary battlefield second not even to George Washington who they hope to emulate. Its pathetic and its instilled by the PTB to get the stupid to uprise periodically, the wholly know that these types will be easy manipulated to do the same as the last group considering they would ever be successfull. Which most likey they are too stupid to actually acheive anything in terms of a real battlefield they construct in their feeble minds.
Peace warriors are in short supply and demand. People who advocate that people take back their rights and responsibilities as individuals are in short supply and demand. People who advocate revolution of the individual, that advocate not supporting the tyrant like Estienne de La Boétie.
This country has watched too many bloody movies and convinced itself that the only way to win is by shedding blood. Whereas history shows that such thinking rarely results in victory short or long term.
Hot Rod, thanks for the injection of sanity…I’ve been drifting toward the dark side this week.
Absolutely–what we don’t want is a Jacobin revolution, which is exactly what they’re leading us towards!
We want a New American Revolution–where the “war” was won completely in the ten years leading up to the final mop-up..and shooting instigated by the British.
They’d already lost. It just had to be shown to them physically, unfortunately.
The people who think the revolution starts with war invite hell on earth.
meth, I read it somewhere else and noticed a link to the DailySheeple. I sent it to a bunch of people and everybody was just miffed. The guy who says kill them has a point though. Now that just being accused of DWI is almost a death sentence, unless you’re Alice Walton, who just got no-billed on her second in Ft. Worth. The DPS who stopped her got fired but no specifics. He might have gotten a rather “good deal” from someone, say a billionaire heiress?
In response to the post yesterday of the Grist for Breakfast site on cops getting 72 hrs. to respond after shooting someone, here is a rebuttal, a veiled threat if you will, from a prosecutor. I’ll be damned, wonders never cease.
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2013/12/shook-new-dallas-pd-policy-on-police.html?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzEmail&utm_content=79553&utm_campaign=0
“Why didn’t the police just use the Taser on Broadnax in the first place?”
Maybe it’s because they’re fucking cowards who shit themseves and shoot wildly at the first twinge of anxiety they feel. The cops should be charged with attempted murder. Their actions qualify for the charge because they exhibited a “depraved indifference to human life”.
The DA deserves prison time but will end up mayor of NYC, probably.
Cops remind of little children. It’s always the fault of someone else. Someone made them do it. They are never responsible for their own actions.
Let’s imagine for a moment that a psycho killer was trying to kill an armed mundane. For the sake of argument there are many credible witnesses to testify to this as the truth. The mundane takes a shot, misses, and wounds a bystander. What happens to the mundane? He is charged and put on trial and will likely go to prison and have to pay for the medical bills of the bystander.
But when it’s a cop, the whole thing changes, even when the person they were aiming for was of no threat to them whatsoever.
Hi Brent,
Yup.
Anyone who has a CHP knows that there are severe repercussions for even “brandishing” (displaying) a firearm, let alone actually pointing it at someone (to say nothing of actually firing a shot.)
But cops? They’re given virtual carte blanche to point guns at people, and when they discharge them – even with gross negligence – it’s rare they’re ever held to the fire in the way that you or I would be if we did exactly the same thing.