Too late, Al Sharpton is already on the case.
Via Fox News:
In an effort to calm growing anger and heated street protests, New York City police on Thursday released several security videos and 911 transcripts from the harrowing minutes leading up to officers’ decision to fatally shoot a mentally ill black suspect in Brooklyn.
The videos appeared to support the NYPD’s claims that the man on Wednesday evening was repeatedly thrusting a metal object that looked like a gun into the faces of several people — including a woman holding the hand of her child.
One clip shows the man holding the object in what police described as a “two-handed shooting stance” as officers arrived.
New video and 911 call transcript excerpts from yesterday’s police involved shooting in #Brooklyn. NYPD received several calls from neighborhood residents about a man pointing a gun at people on the street.
Four plainclothes and two uniformed officers responded, unleashing 10 shots that left Saheed Vassell, 34, dead. The city’s medical examiner found he was hit seven to nine times, including one shot to the head.
His weapon turned out to be an L-shaped section of pipe, which several 911 callers had told operators resembled a firearm.
The shooting prompted two nights of protests among many who felt police should have known that Vassell, a fixture in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood, had emotional problems.
On Thursday night, protesters marched to NYPD’s 71st precinct and demanded the release of the names of the officers involved in the shooting — and their badges.
“They need to lose their jobs and they need to be put in jail – the same as if someone kills a cop,” Ramel Johnson, 38, told The Guardian. “It’s become clear they have no respect for human life.”
But Mayor Bill De Blasio didn’t blame the cops, and said they had no information that the person they were confronting was mentally ill.
“It’s a tragedy because a man with a profound mental health problem … was doing something that people perceived to be a threat to the safety of others,” de Blasio said at a news conference.