Two Plainclothes Officers Are Shot in the Bronx
January 5, 2015
Two plainclothes New York City police officers were shot in the Bronx on Monday night while they were investigating an armed robbery at a grocery store, the police said.
One officer, Andrew Dossi, 30, was shot in the lower back and arm, and was in critical but stable condition early Tuesday, the police said. The other officer, Aliro Pellerano, 38, was shot in the chest and arm; he was in stable condition.
At a news conference at St. Barnabas Hospital early Tuesday, Police Commissioner William J. Bratton said the police were searching for two suspects. Later, around 4:45 a.m., the police released a video showing the suspect who they said fired at the officers.
After the shootings on Monday night, Deputy Chief Kim Y. Royster made it clear that the officers had not been initially targeted by the gunman — as occurred in the Dec. 20 fatal shooting of two officers in their patrol car in Brooklyn — but were instead investigating a robbery when the shooting began.
(
I'd say if they were there investigating the robbery, that was a pretty good indication they were cops to the bad guys who took the opportunity to open fire when they otherwise might not have if not given the current climate.)
The officers were shot around 10:30 p.m. when they approached two possible suspects in the grocery store robbery outside a nearby Chinese restaurant on Tiebout Avenue near East 184th Street. One of the suspects then walked into the restaurant; as the officers approached the other man on the street, the suspect in the restaurant ran out and fired at the officers, Mr. Bratton said. The officers returned fire, and the suspects fled on foot before carjacking a white Camaro that had two women inside, he said.
The police found the car abandoned near East 188th Street and Park Avenue and recovered a black revolver nearby, Mr. Bratton said. They are investigating whether the man who fired at the officers was also involved in the earlier robbery at the grocery store, which is on 180th Street, Mr. Bratton said.
The officers were part of a five-member plainclothes anticrime team in the 46th Precinct and were nearing the end of their shift, Mr. Bratton said. When a call came in reporting the grocery store robbery, all five officers jumped into a car to investigate.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has come under harsh criticism from police unions after the killings of the two officers last month, praised the officers who were wounded on Monday night for their quick action.
“These officers did something that was extraordinarily brave this evening,” Mr. de Blasio told reporters at the hospital around 2:30 a.m. He said they were coming off their shift when the robbery call came in, but “went back out in search of these criminals.”
“This is absolutely a case of officers going above and beyond the call to protect their fellow New Yorkers,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding: “This is another indicator of the dangers that our officers face in the line of duty. We depend on them to keep this whole city safe.”
Shortly after the shooting, investigators were notified that a man had arrived at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center with a gunshot wound to his back, Mr. Bratton said. He said that the police were investigating whether he had any connection to the shooting.
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Robert K. Boyce, the chief of detectives, said that the man, who arrived at the hospital at 11:09 p.m., was still being treated, and that the police had not yet spoken to him because he was intubated.
The two suspects were described as Hispanic men, 25 to 30 years old. One man has a close cropped beard, and one may be wounded. The suspect’s gun was a Ruger Blackhawk with a 7.5-inch barrel, Chief Boyce said. “It looks like the gun at the bodega right now, but we’re not 100 percent,” he said, referring to the earlier robbery. He also said that the officers had their shields out, and that the gunman knew they were police officers when he fired.
One of the wounded officers is a seven-year veteran of the department, and the other has been on the force for six years, Mr. Bratton said.
Just after midnight, Ritchie Torres, the city councilman who represents the neighborhood, released a statement asking New Yorkers to keep the officers and their families in their prayers.
“Tonight’s shooting underscores, in the most painfully human terms, the extraordinary risk that officers take in keeping our neighborhoods safe from violent crime,” Mr. Torres said. “The two criminals responsible for the shootings deserve no mercy at all: They should be swiftly apprehended and prosecuted aggressively to the fullest extent of the law.”
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Ken Murray/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Police have stepped up security at two Brooklyn stationhouses after a report of a threat that they are being targeted by a notorious Baltimore gang, police sources said.
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Originally Posted by American Patriot
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