Two New York City police officers fired into a crowded Brooklyn subway station, shooting and injuring four people on Sept. 15. One of the injured bystanders was a hospital employee, who is now in critical condition after being hit in the head with a bullet fired by police during his commute to work.
According to the NYPD, the catalyst for the confrontation was an alleged fare evasion, as the two officers suspected that 37-year-old Derell Mickles had skipped a turnstile at the Sutter Avenue Subway station. The officers followed Mickles, resulting in a foot chase that ended with officers shooting him, two bystanders and another officer on duty over Mickles allegedly not paying the $2.90 subway fare.
NYPD initially stated in a press conference that the officers had recovered a knife Mickles had used to threaten the two officers, though officials later contradicted the claim, stating an unknown man had taken the knife away from the scene.
During his weekly press conference, New York City Mayor Eric Adams praised the two officers. “I think that those officers should be commended for how they really showed a great level of restraint,” Adams said “It’s just unfortunate that innocent people were shot because of that. But they were shot because they had a dangerous repeated offender on our subway system.”
New York authorities have made reducing crime on the subway and buses a top priority following a series of violent attacks, robberies and murders. A crackdown on fare evasion is part of that push, but many people have questioned how the pursuit of a minor offender escalated into the use of lethal force in a crowded space.
Adams alleged that he had seen video footage of Mickles walking towards police with a knife, but the footage has not yet been released to the public. When pressed on whether the footage would be released, Adams said that it would “violate police procedures.”
