Police: Off-Duty Cop Fatally Shoots Man In Brooklyn Road Rage Incident

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — An apparent road rage incident involving an off-duty NYPD officer turned deadly early Monday morning.

The officer was stopped at a red light after a traffic dispute when a 38-year-old driver attacked the officer, who was seated in his personal car, by repeatedly punching him in the head through an open window, police said.

The officer pulled out his gun and shot three times at the other driver, striking him in the head. He was shot in front of his wife and two children. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, WCBS 880’s Kelly Waldron reported.

Family members identified the victim to CBS2’s Magdalena Doris as Delrawn Small. They said he wasn’t armed and should still be alive today.

“His wife was in the car with him. His two kids were there,” said Victor Dempsey, the victim’s brother. “They were going to see fireworks up by whatever park is in the neighborhood.

“It has to stop. It’s not right that they just get a gun and a badge and they can do what they want to do,” Victor Dempsey continued.

CBS2’s Christine Sloan reported the incident happened just before midnight on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn where Small was visiting childhood friends at a barbershop to celebrate the holiday weekend.

Small’s friend said the officer was “out of control.”

“My brother was a loving, kind father. He was out here working trying to provide for his family and he was killed in front of his family by a cop out here out of control,” Keith said.

Dempsey’s family, their lawyer Roger Wareham and New York City Councilman Charles Barron returned to the scene later Monday morning for a news conference, 1010 WINS’ Glenn Schuck reported.

“He could have rolled up his window, he could have driven away,” Wareham said. “He did not have to shoot him.”

“Take off. Roll up your window. Avoid any kind of confrontation,” Barron said of the off-duty cop, comments echoed by the family’s attorney. “For him to discharge his weapon three times and take one’s life over some kind of verbal confrontation is outrageous. We are demanding justice.”

The officer, whose name has not been released, claims his life was in danger, police said.

“I’m here, and I’m distraught because I know he’s a great man,” Victor Dempsey said of his brother. “This is somebody that I looked up to. This is somebody that pushed me to do better, the same way I pushed him to do better. It hurts to see them going so far and doing so much to just get stopped dead in your tracks, literally.”

The family said they’re concerned they may not get all of the answers they are looking for.

“It hurts more when it is by the hands of someone that’s supposed to be protecting us,” Victor Dempsey said. “Now all I’m seeing is them protecting themselves.”

The New York State Attorney General’s office said it is actively reviewing the case.

“Members of the Attorney Genera’s Special Investigations and Prosecutions Unit are in contact with the NYPD, the victim’s family, and community leaders. SIPU has a search warrant for the officer’s car and is actively reviewing the case,” Eric Soufer, spokesman for New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, said in a statement.

The off-duty officer, a three-year veteran assigned to the 79th Precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is recovering at Jamaica Hospital from cuts and bruises to his head and face. There have been no charges filed.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said Monday afternoon that the cop had just finished a shift and was likely headed home at the time of the incident. Police believe he used his service weapon in the shooting.

“It’s much, much too early to draw any conclusions at this time,” Bratton said. “It is a protocol that our Force Investigation Division will do a very comprehensive initial investigation. We’re gathering a lot of video from the area, cameras that we were able to identify. We have talked with the officer.”

Police won’t say what the original dispute was that led to the confrontation. Police are not releasing anymore information until the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division determines exactly what happened.

On Friday, video footage was released showing the moments leading up to Small’s death. The surveillance footage taken at the intersection is grainy, yet shows Small exit his vehicle and walk up to the officer’s driver’s side window before shots were fired. From the footage, which admiringly is grainy, it appears Small never attacked the officer. Within seconds you see Small attempt to flee as the officer fires at him. The officer then gets out of his car, checks on Small, then goes back to his car before the video cuts off. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The officer has been identified as Officer #WayneIsaacs of NYPD. Not only did the newly released footage contradict Issacs' claims, it also contradicts claims of the owner of a nearby building who insisted the "angry motorist" could be seen “punching the sh*t” out of Isaacs.

Freeway Rick Ross recently sat down with Funk Flex for an in-depth interview.

He talks about growing up poor in South Central Los Angeles, learning to hustle, getting to the 12th grade despite not knowing how to read because he was a good tennis player, stealing cars, finding his drug connect, court case against rapper Rick Ross, preparing to sue John Singleton and FX over the series "Snowfall."

This argument is a lie decades in the making.

Statistical data collected by the FBI in 2016 reported that 90.1 percent of black homicide victims were killed by black perpetrators. Similarly, 83.5 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other whites, a figure comparable to that for black victims. And yet the term “white-on-white crime” does not exist in American lexicon. According to Columbia University professor Carla Shedd, “All violence and crime is about proximity” to the point that the label “‘black-on-black crime’ is an unnecessary specification.” Furthermore, the extent to which black individuals are committing crime has been vastly exaggerated in the public imagination. Data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics maintains that less than one percent of all black Americans commit a violent crime in any given year, which, stated differently, means that 99 percent of black Americans do not commit crimes to contribute to the black-on-black crime categorization.

Crime was on the upswing in the 1980s. Mainstream news sources like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post treated violent crimes in the city like spectacles, covering the goriest details with specificity and frequency that created a national panic over crime and the black Americans that seemed to be at the center of it. Thus, black-on-black crime emerged as a racialized means of understanding this wave of violence and its confluence with continued urban decline. Not only had they placed a major burden on the resources of struggling cities with their dependency, they were making those same cities hotbeds of violent crime. Both lent further credence to the idea that there was something wrong with black communities. According to conservative St. Louis planner Joe Plann, the city’s deterioration in the 1980s, not unlike that of many others, was due to the fact that “kids became more unstable and started this ‘black-on-black violence’ stuff”.

Construction of the black-on-black crime myth began as federal housing programs stimulated homeownership for whites in suburbia and conspired with real estate developers to discourage such ownership for blacks. In 1950, the National Association of Real Estate Boards maintained that “a Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood… any race, or nationality, or individuals whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values.” Inspired by the efforts begun by the Federal Housing Administration, which created maps to indicate which areas were right (read: white) for investment for use by banks and private lenders, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation further entrenched discriminatory redlining as public policy, offering loans on a selective basis and insuring only those properties that agreed to restrictive covenants.

Chicago provides a particularly insightful case study into the depths to which state-sanctioned discrimination confined black Americans to concentrated poverty. Thanks to the city’s enthusiasm for restrictive covenants, nearly half of all residential neighborhoods in Chicago were inaccessible to black families by the 1940s. After the power to enforce restrictive covenants was compromised, Chicago relied on public housing to keep black communities in check. Between 1950 and the mid-1960s almost all (98 percent) of the public housing complexes built in Chicago were constructed in black neighborhoods.

There's a reason I call myself an autistic, rather than utilizing person first language, and said reason has nothing to do with laziness. It has everything to do with the fact that autism is an integral part of who I am. Autism is not a disease, a disorder, or something holding me prisoner in a shell. Autism is a culture, a lifestyle, and a way of being. We don't try to cure people of being Chinese, because that is unethical and impossible. Nor do we refer to said people as "having Chinese tendencies," because that sounds stupid and we recognize that someone's nationality is part of WHO THEY ARE.

Autism doesn't yet get the respect as a culture that it deserves. People don't realize that autism shades into personality and is crucial to us remaining who we truly are. Because autism was woefully under-identified in the past, we are a relatively new disability culture. We are learning from the Deaf culture, and in many ways our struggles can be seen as similar. Like the Deaf, we autistics have a communication barrier with the majority of society, and people are always trying to cure both conditions. The former does not make the latter any more heinous. Autism, like Deafness, is a valid counterculture. To cure us would be to stamp out our whole way of life, and this is NOT good medical practice or the like-it is genocide born of xenophobia-a fear of outsiders. In many ways we spectrumites are the ultimate outsiders, but that DOES NOT make our way of being less worthwhile. This is why I and most other adults on the spectrum are anti-cure.

Allow me to make something perfectly clear: anti-cure DOES NOT MEAN anti-progress. Quite the contrary, I am strongly in favor of teaching spectrum kids the skills they'll need to live independently. This does not mean making them more typical, however; this means teaching practical ways around the challenges and also teaching the children to advocate for themselves so they can get their own needs met. The focus should not be on achieving normalcy, but instead on learning to live happily and productively AS AUTISTICS. The practical upshot of the above is this: kids shouldn't be running from therapy to therapy to doctor to therapy in an effort to train and medicate autism out of them to render them Indistinguishable From Peers. 

Autistic children ARE STILL CHILDREN, and the over-intensive programming just isn't age appropriate. All kids deserve time to just be kids, and so many spectrum children don't get that. I also think that the only time medication is appropriate is when it makes the person who takes it more comfortable-it should NOT be to make the parent's life easier. In fact, that is my criteria for most all interventions-if a special diet makes some children more comfortable, then it is right for that child. If occupational therapy lessens painful sensory issues, that's GREAT, sign me up too. If chelation makes a kid miserable but at least they are too tired to get into anything because of the stress on their body, that is NOT cool. Kids have lost kidneys to chelation, and I am against anything that dangerous. Kids are kids, autism or not, and I don't know any parents who would willingly put their typical children at that kind of risk. Autism is a culture. It's as much a part of me as my freckles, my Slavic ancestry, my tumbling obsession, and my whacky sense of humor. It makes me different, but it has shaped who I am, and who many of my friends are, and I wouldn't 

Baltimore Police Officer Caesar Goodson Jr. was found not guilty Tuesday of all 21 administrative charges against him in the 2015 arrest and death of Freddie Gray.

The verdict absolves Goodson once and for all in the high-profile case, and allows him to continue his career in the city police force.

Goodson, 48, the driver of the police van in which Gray was found with severe and ultimately fatal spinal cord injuries in April 2015, had faced possible termination if any of the charges against him was sustained. He was charged with neglecting his duty by failing to ensure Gray’s safety, including by not securing a handcuffed and shackled Gray in a seat belt and not calling a medic for Gray after he requested one. He was also charged with making false statements to investigators.

The decision clearing him of all charges was unanimous among the three law enforcement officials who presided over the six-day administrative trial, and follows his acquittal on all criminal charges, including second-degree depraved-heart murder, at a separate trial last year.

“This is a vindication of this officer,” said Sean Malone, one of Goodson’s attorneys, shortly after the verdict was read during a brief reconvening of the panel at the University of Baltimore about 1 p.m. Tuesday. “This is a tragic accident that happened, and we’re sorry for the loss of Mr. Gray, but we’re glad that our client is not going to be the face of this incident.”

The panel’s decision is final and cannot be challenged by the city or the Police Department.

Police Commissioner Kevin Davis, in a statement, said the department “will stay the course” with the upcoming trial boards for two other officers charged administratively in the case.

“Freddie Gray died in police custody. My thoughts and prayers remain with the Gray family,” Davis said. “We will continue to make improvements within our organization to meet the expectations of constitutional policing demanded by our community.”

William H. “Billy” Murphy, the Gray family’s attorney, could not immediately be reached for comment. The city previously reached a $6.4 million civil settlement with Gray’s family.

Malone said Goodson did not want to comment himself, but intends to “take care of his family” by continuing his 18-year career with the department until retirement.

“Officer Goodson is just ready to get on. This is three years. He had a murder charge over his head, he’s had this over his head. He’s a quiet man, he’s a hard-working man, he’s just happy to resume his life,” Malone said. “This has been hard on him and his family, and it’s nice to get his life back.”

In delivering the verdict, Prince George’s County Police Maj. Rosa Guixens, the chair of the panel, read out “not guilty” 21 times in a row before abruptly closing the proceedings.

Goodson was stoic until the last “not guilty” was read out, when he broke into a smile. He then hugged his attorneys, who congratulated each other and slapped one another on the back.

Outside the hearing room, Goodson’s father, Caesar Goodson Sr., who had sat through the entire trial, said “the family is glad it’s over.”

“My son is a good son and a good officer,” he said. “We hope no other officer has to go through that.”

Goodson has always maintained his innocence, saying in a statement to investigators aired for the first time at his administrative trial that he did not believe it was safe for him to climb into the van to secure Gray in a seat belt, and that he did not believe that Gray was injured or needed medical care when he requested it.

Gray, 25, was found unconscious and suffering from severe spinal cord injuries in the back of the van after a ride that included several stops, and died a week later. This death precipitated widespread protests against police brutality, and his funeral was followed by rioting, looting and arson that captured national attention and sent the city into a weeklong nightly curfew as the National Guard was called in to maintain order.

Six officers were charged criminally in the Gray case; none was convicted. Goodson, Lt. Brian Rice and Officer Edward Nero were acquitted at bench trials, and Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby then dropped all remaining charges against the other three officers.

The U.S. Justice Department also investigated Gray’s death but declined to bring any federal charges against the officers.

Five of those officers were subsequently charged administratively in the case after detectives from Montgomery and Howard counties conducted an outside investigation into Gray’s death on behalf of the city and the Police Department.

Goodson is the first officer to face a trial board in the case.

In addition to failures related to Gray’s safety, Goodson also faced charges that he made false statements to the county detectives, and that he failed to properly document his actions on the day of Gray’s arrest.

After the verdict, Malone said Goodson had been “wrongfully charged” from the start, echoing his arguments at trial that Goodson had acted in good faith as any reasonable officer would have under the circumstances.

Malone argued at the trial that the police department had failed to properly train or equip Goodson — and all of its officers — to handle non-compliant detainees, and that Goodson had deferred to his supervisors and other officers who had been more directly involved in loading Gray into the van and deciding not to secure him in a seat belt.

Neil Duke, the attorney for the city, had argued Goodson had failed in his duty to keep Gray safe, and was simply trying to pass blame on to the department and the other officers around him that day.

Duke, who could not be reached for comment after the verdict, said during the trial that Goodson was a veteran officer who had “become perhaps a little hardened or callous or indifferent to the plight of an average citizen.”

After the verdict, the local police union applauded the panel’s decision to clear Goodson.

Lt. Gene Ryan, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3, said in a statement that while Gray’s death was “an extremely unfortunate incident,” no officers were responsible.

“Officer Goodson can now turn the page on from this chapter in his life and continue his career with the Baltimore Police Department,” Ryan said.

Tuesday’s verdict did not sit well with advocates of police reform.

Monique Dixon, deputy director of policy at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said in a statement Tuesday that the decision was “appalling, yet predictable” given the fact that the panel presiding over the trial was comprised entirely of law enforcement officers.

“As long as the city lets law enforcement police themselves in lieu of meaningful civilian oversight, these proceedings will not result in accountability and will fail to strengthen community trust,” Dixon said. “These hearings are hollow unless they are fundamentally altered to incorporate resident input, transparency, and accountability.”

Lawrence Grandpre, of the local grass-roots think tank Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, watched the proceedings and said the verdict did not come as a surprise to him, either.

“It’s nothing unexpected. We’ve been trying to reform these trial boards for three or four years,” he said, noting his organization’s efforts to add citizens to the panels.

Grandpre said he is concerned officers serving on the panels are partial to the officers who they have been tasked with passing judgment on, because “they are thinking, ‘That could be me.’ ”

Both Dixon and Grandpre said their organizations will continue working to change laws in Maryland and in Baltimore to improve civilian oversight of the police and police misconduct trials.