NY - Deborah Danner, 66, fatally shot by NYPD in her Bronx apt, 18 Oct 2016

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'We Failed' in Shooting of Mentally Ill Woman: NYPD Chief

The NYPD sergeant who shot and killed an emotionally disturbed 66-year-old woman at her apartment in the Bronx Tuesday after she charged him with a bat has been placed on modified duty pending an investigation.

Police Commissioner James O'Neill said after a breakfast in the city Wednesday that it appeared some NYPD protocol as it relates to emotionally disturbed individuals was not followed in the case of Deborah Danner.

"What is clear in this one instance, we failed. I want to know why it happened," O'Neill said. "We do have policies and procedures for handling emotionally disturbed people and it looks like some of those procedures weren't followed.

Officials said there had been past 911 reports regarding Danner, who had schizophrenia. One woman who lives in the building said that recently "they brought her out in a straitjacket, she was hollering and screaming."

A straitjacket! What year is it? I hope she's just sharing something she heard from an unreliable source.


This article says she was armed with a bat and a pair of scissors. The officer convinced her to drop the scissors but then she charged at the officer and he shot her twice in the chest.

NYPD kills 66-year-old schizophrenic black woman

The NYPD admitted the excessive use of force in a statement, saying that the incident would undergo a full investigation since the officer
(Sergeant Hugh Barry) could subdue Danner by simply using his Taser.

“The sergeant was armed with a Taser. It was not deployed, and the reason it was not deployed will be part of the investigation and review,” said NYPD Assistant Chief Larry Nikunen.

I'm not sure how scary a 66-year-old woman with a baseball bat could be. Had she been physical with officers on previous occasions? I wonder about the difference in their sizes.


Terrence Cunningham is also mentioned in the article because on Monday he said this:

The president of America’s largest police management organization on Monday issued a formal apology to the nation’s minority population “for the actions of the past and the role that our profession has played in society’s historical mistreatment of communities of color.”

“Events over the past several years,” Cunningham said, “have caused many to question the actions of our officers and has tragically undermined the trust that the public must and should have in their police departments…The history of the law enforcement profession is replete with examples of bravery, self-sacrifice, and service to the community. At its core, policing is a noble profession.”

“At the same time, it is also clear that the history of policing has also had darker periods.” He cited laws enacted by state and federal governments which “have required police officers to perform many unpalatable tasks…While this is no longer the case, this dark side of our shared history has created a multigenerational — almost inherited — mistrust between many communities of color and their law enforcement agencies.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...izes-for-historic-mistreatment-of-minorities/
 
Oh my God, this is so terrible and you are right- it is 2016- a friggen straight jacket? Thinking of Katiecoolady today and her beloved brother Alfonse. Heartbreaking.
 
Oh my God, this is so terrible and you are right- it is 2016- a friggen straight jacket? Thinking of Katiecoolady today and her beloved brother Alfonse. Heartbreaking.

Right? To me it's more shocking they would use a straitjacket than it is they would shoot her.

Who are Katiecoolady and Alfonse?
 
You're not sure how scary a 66 year old woman with a baseball bat could be? Seriously? Maybe if it was a foam baseball bat or a hollow plastic kids bat, but I doubt that's the case here.

I don't blame the LEO. We are failing as a nation when it comes to treatment of the mentally ill. Clearly she was a danger to herself and/or others. Could she have been tased? Possibly, but anyone charging a LEO with a baseball bat isn't going to end well.

I don't know what the answer is beyond the family or caregiver notifying police of mental illness and coming up with protocal on how to help the ill person before things like this occur. But with privacy laws who knows how compliant and or cooperative family members might be in providing that kind of medical information to local LE.

Another thought. When a call is made to 911 about a mentally ill person shouldn't LE be accompanied by someone more specialized in dealing with the mentally ill? Similarly to an expert in hostage negotiation. Couldn't paramedics receive some additional treatment on dealing with these mental illness type situations?
 
You're not sure how scary a 66 year old woman with a baseball bat could be? Seriously? Maybe if it was a foam baseball bat or a hollow plastic kids bat, but I doubt that's the case here.

I don't blame the LEO. We are failing as a nation when it comes to treatment of the mentally ill. Clearly she was a danger to herself and/or others. Could she have been tased? Possibly, but anyone charging a LEO with a baseball bat isn't going to end well.

I don't know what the answer is beyond the family or caregiver notifying police of mental illness and coming up with protocal on how to help the ill person before things like this occur. But with privacy laws who knows how compliant and or cooperative family members might be in providing that kind of medical information to local LE.

Another thought. When a call is made to 911 about a mentally ill person shouldn't LE be accompanied by someone more specialized in dealing with the mentally ill? Similarly to an expert in hostage negotiation. Couldn't paramedics receive some additional treatment on dealing with these mental illness type situations?

It looks like you skipped over some important parts of my comment:

I'm not sure how scary a 66-year-old woman with a baseball bat could be. Had she been physical with officers on previous occasions? I wonder about the difference in their sizes.

How can you be so sure? What if she's 5'2 and weighs 100 pounds and he's 6' and weighs 200? What if she were holding the bat and sobbing or curled up in a corner? We've heard the "charged the officer" story and found out it wasn't true too often for me to automatically believe it.

Why didn't he use his taser? Why is the Police Commissioner saying they failed? I'm going to trust what he says over someone who isn't familiar with the situation and hasn't done any investigating. I assume he knows what he's talking about.

Whatever this officer did he is responsible for his own actions.
 
It looks like you skipped over some important parts of my comment:

I'm not sure how scary a 66-year-old woman with a baseball bat could be. Had she been physical with officers on previous occasions? I wonder about the difference in their sizes.

How can you be so sure? What if she's 5'2 and weighs 100 pounds and he's 6' and weighs 200? What if she were holding the bat and sobbing or curled up in a corner? We've heard the "charged the officer" story and found out it wasn't true too often for me to automatically believe it.

Why didn't he use his taser? Why is the Police Commissioner saying they failed? I'm going to trust what he says over someone who isn't familiar with the situation and hasn't done any investigating. I assume he knows what he's talking about.

Whatever this officer did he is responsible for his own actions.

What if she also would've been a threat to children, or anyone, in the future, and LE wasn't there to stop her?

Once, a schizophrenic woman beat up my mom, who had her arm in sling due to a shoulder op, in the street, just out of the blue. Had I been there, I'm not sure how I would have reacted, she didn't have a bat. I would have recognized her right off the bat. Years prior to that, her son had stayed with us for a bit. He was in school with my kids, and his mom was beating him up, especially a lot on the head with hard objects. The two things weren't related at all, just coincidence. The woman was once again committed for treatment. My Mom had some more healing to do.
 
What if she also would've been a threat to children, or anyone, in the future?

Once, a schizophrenic lady beat up my mom who had her arm in sling due to a shoulder op, in the street, out of the blue. Had I been there, I'm not sure how I would have reacted, she didn't have a bat. I would have recognized her right off the bat. Years prior to that, her son had stayed with us for a bit. He was in school with my kids, and his mom was beating him up, especially a lot on the head with hard objects. The woman was once again committed for treatment.

Had she been physical before? What happened on those occasions? Also - this officer was a professional and the expectations of him are different than of a civilian. And if she was such a great danger to herself or others (which we don't really know yet) she should have been being treated as an inpatient.

And then there are the two big questions - was she actually charging him, and WHY didn't he use his taser? She didn't do anything as far as we know that was a capital crime.
 
I didn't skip over anything. Their differences in size make no difference when it comes to swinging a bat. Heck a 9 yr old could be dangerous with a swing of a bat. If she was curled up in a ball clutching the bat she would not have been a danger to herself or the LEO.

I'm not ready to assume all LEO'S are lying when they claim a suspect was charging an officer. Nor am I going to assume just because he said we failed that automatically means the LEO wasn't in danger. What I will say with certainty is between political correctness and bad LEO'S, the illness, mental illness, gets lost every time.
 
Had she been physical before? What happened on those occasions? Also - this officer was a professional and the expectations of him are different than of a civilian. And if she was such a great danger to herself or others (which we don't really know yet) she should have been being treated as an inpatient.

And then there are the two big questions - was she actually charging him, and WHY didn't he use his taser? She didn't do anything as far as we know that was a capital crime.

Not sure, I know she had been in and out of treatment, over the years, and her son was not in good shape when he was with us. Sweetest, gentlest, coolest kid. Grew up just fine, a good man. I have no doubt he could've been killed or my mom, if they couldn't fight her off and flee. She had a habit of side-swiping, now that I think of it, the way he described her surprising him with a thuds on the head. Shoulda, coulda, woulda is a luxury of time. In the moment, who knows, it seems to me. Treatment only lasts so long. If charges are pressed they end up getting worse, incarcerated. Once out of treatment, they stop their meds, and the whole cycle begins again. That's the law. They're adults with rights. And all the systems to deal with it are overloaded. My impressions, nothing to do with this case, but I'm not going sit in judgement.
 
NYC Mayor: Police Shooting of Woman, 66, Was 'Unacceptable'

New York City's mayor castigated a police sergeant Wednesday for fatally shooting a mentally ill, 66-year-old woman brandishing a baseball bat, saying her "tragic" and "unacceptable" death resulted from failure to follow basic policies.

"Our officers are supposed to use deadly force only when faced with a dire situation. It's very hard to see that standard was met," a somber Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "Something went horribly wrong here."

"Deborah Danner should be alive right now, period," the mayor said. "If the protocols had been followed, she would be alive. It's as simple as that."

Danner's sister, Jennifer, was in the hallway, outside the apartment, waiting to accompany her to the hospital, when the shots rang out, said the mayor, who spoke to her on Wednesday.

New York City police responds to tens of thousand of calls about emotionally disturbed people each year. Officers and commanders, Barry among them, receive training on how to deal with mentally ill people that includes instruction in techniques to "de-escalate" a situation, rather than resort to force.
 
How Did It Go Wrong? Loved Ones Seek Answers In Death Of Woman Shot By NYPD

O’Neill said one of the things officials will be looking at is why the sergeant didn’t use his Taser, 1010 WINS’ Al Jones reported.

“It’s not enough to say that the vast majority of cases, we get it right, because any one life lost is a precious life,” he said.

Last year, the NYPD dealt with 150,000 calls about emotionally disturbed people.

O’Neill said while there are detailed plans in place for responding, “If we need to change the way we do business, we’ll do that.”

This also says emergency services were on their way but got there too late. I wonder why he couldn't wait for them. It must be part of their detailed plan on how to deal with people who are in crisis.
 
I'd like to know why he didn't use his taser. The link in post #10 indicates he did have a taser. Additionally that same article is mentioning something along the lines of an unarmed citizen. I don't consider someone swinging or raising a bat and charging someone as being unarmed.

Anyhoo, on the mental illness side at some point the patient has some responsibility for being non compliant with their medication. If a patient is consistently non compliant some kind of intervention needs to take place before they reach the extreme this woman did. I know this is a political hot topic right now. IMO, prevention needs to occur before this will change. We need to look at alternative ways to keep patients compliant with their meds.

This would have never happened if this woman was compliant with her meds.
 
Emergency services would not have gone in if she had the scissors in her hand. They would have waited for LE to unarm her.

I meant disarm, not unarm---can't edit for some reason...
 
Troubled Bronx Woman Deborah Danner Was Battling Own Family When She Was Killed by Cop

Danner didn't see it that way. In a remarkable six-page essay called "Living With Schizophrenia" that she wrote back in 2012, Danner said she felt "disappointed" by her sister and other kin and accused them of buying into the "stigma" surrounding mental illness.

"Generally speaking, those who don't suffer believe the worst of us who do," she wrote. "We're treated with suspicion as liars who can't be trusted to control ourselves."

Old friends also abandoned her, she wrote. So did some relatives.

"I felt myself isolated and mostly alone…without their company or succor," she wrote. "I was left to the tender mercies of a series of doctors and other mental health professionals."

Eerily, Danner discussed the need for more mental health training for police officers and described a deadly scenario with a cop that foreshadowed her final moments alive.

"We are all aware of the all too frequent news stories about the mentally ill who come up against law enforcement instead of mental health professionals and end up dead," she wrote.

"This was a tragedy," said Charles Hargreaves, a lawyer for the state's Mental Hygiene Legal Service who represented Danner in her legal battle with her sister. "She did not want to be just a schizophrenic. She aspired to be a whole person. And in many respects, she was."

Link to the essay:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/danner.pdf
 
NYPD Commissioner: Fatal Bronx Shooting Of Woman ‘Agency Failure’

From NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill:
“As I said before, we were called to that apartment to help someone. We ended up killing her. To me, that’s an agency failure and every police officer knows when they use deadly physical force, they’re accountable for that.'



Then from the Sergeants Benevolent Association:
“I’m not surprised. He is a newly appointed commissioner. He’s working for a mayor who has an anti-police perspective of the world,” said union president Ed Mullins. “What I am surprised is how quickly the mayor neutered this commissioner. In less than a month, everything has changed from this cop’s cop that he was known as to now being the neutered little puppy of the mayor.”
:blah:
 
Right? To me it's more shocking they would use a straitjacket than it is they would shoot her.

Who are Katiecoolady and Alfonse?

Agreed! In today's world, LE doesn't get close enough to anyone to subdue them for a straight jacket to be put on. The only solution officers know today is to shoot. What a world we live in!

Just a personal note - The other day I had to stop because an officer had pulled the car in front of him over. I turned onto the street they were on which put me directly behind the officer. It was a two lane road. So I had to wait for clearance to pass these two. As I waiting to pass, I saw the officer put his hand on his weapon! My heart just about stopped as the thought went through my mind as to what was going on?! However, in passing, the driver, who had been pulled over, he had both hands on top of the steering wheel, lifted one hand slightly to gesture backwards as if explaining his story. He was a small college age man, seemed very calm, and was black. Officer was white. Seeing this, I got angry! Who would not get more upset when stopped by LE if they then saw this officer put his hand on his gun?! Personally, I would freak out the way things are today. I am white, any officer doing this would scare the life out of me! I felt sorry for this kid.
 
Agreed! In today's world, LE doesn't get close enough to anyone to subdue them for a straight jacket to be put on. The only solution officers know today is to shoot. What a world we live in!

Just a personal note - The other day I had to stop because an officer had pulled the car in front of him over. I turned onto the street they were on which put me directly behind the officer. It was a two lane road. So I had to wait for clearance to pass these two. As I waiting to pass, I saw the officer put his hand on his weapon! My heart just about stopped as the thought went through my mind as to what was going on?! However, in passing, the driver, who had been pulled over, he had both hands on top of the steering wheel, lifted one hand slightly to gesture backwards as if explaining his story. He was a small college age man, seemed very calm, and was black. Officer was white. Seeing this, I got angry! Who would not get more upset when stopped by LE if they then saw this officer put his hand on his gun?! Personally, I would freak out the way things are today. I am white, any officer doing this would scare the life out of me! I felt sorry for this kid.

Wow!

I would have felt bad for him too. Holy crap. I can only imagine what was going through his head.
 
I've dealt with 60+ year old patients with schizophrenia and believe me when I tell you, size doesn't matter. The two could have been in tight quarters where using the taser would have been fruitless. Here's the thing. If she was being noncompliant with her meds yet living alone, then she may have had no one to keep her compliant. We don't know what happened here but even a mentally ill person can kill someone including a cop. If he gave her ample warning to drop the bat, which can be used with deadly force, he had every right to protect himself.
There's a feeling that LE should immediately know if someone is mentally unsound. In all reality there's no way to know when you have only moments to decide. If he felt his life was in danger he had every right to protect himself. It IS sad. But, we have to remember these LEO have families that need them to stay alive.
I can tell you about a stupid cop I came across. I'm sure we all know those towns you pass through that are speed traps. Well I was heading home (5hrs) with my kids to attend my father in law's funeral. He was with us for the last 6 months before he passed away from cancer. His body was sent ahead the day before to be ready for the wake. I was in bad shape from the loss of him. I cried the whole way home. I had both of my young kids in the car with me also crying. I was speeding granted but not by much. I was trying to make it home for the wake. Anyway I hit one of those stupid town speed traps where the speed changes drastically and I just didn't notice. My fault completely. But here's the kicker. Barney Fife pulled me over. I swear to God he looked and acted just like him. Anyway we are both pulled over on the side of the road. That idiot got out of his vehicle not even looking behind him and almost got plastered by a big truck. He had his weapon pulled OUT and pointed at me! As he finally approached my vehicle i was just sitting there like WTH is wrong with you! Mind you my face is puffy and red from crying. He finally put the gun down but not away! I'm a female with two little kids in the car and was only going 10 miles over the speed limit. The gun was unnecessary. He took my paperwork after I explained where I was going and then he proceeded to walk backwards like a freaking cowboy with his gun back pointed at me! 5 cars almost killed him when he did that! He was walking in the middle of the outside lane. Idiot I swear! When he again approached my vehicle the same way I chewed him out. I couldn't stop laughing it was SO ridiculous! I told him he almost got killed multiple times acting like Barney Fife and told him he needed to get a different job if he couldn't tell when someone is not a threat. Had he acted normal I wouldn't have said a thing. He could've accidently killed me in front of my children! I got the charges dropped due to his actions.😉
So there are idiot cops out there. But this cop may have been in grave danger. If there was only a short distance between them he might have had to make a fast decision.
The problem we have now in America is we don't have enough proper facilities to take care of mentally ill patients who are non compliant. Other countries do and they work well.
Non compliant patients can be extremely dangerous and can use excessive or deadly force.
Now a days they usually throw them in a nursing home. When I was a nurse for 8+ years at a nursing home we had a lot of violent patients. One almost beat a helpless elderly patient to death with a walker. Unprovoked.
So it's hard for me to judge this case yet. So many unknowns. Sometimes straight jackets are in the patient's best interest. It can save their lives and others lives. I don't think it's fair to the people who have the job of protecting them and the public when a person is non compliant with orders from a LEO. Would it have been okay if this person wounded and killed this cop? Just because they are mentally ill? It's something to think about. Although he could have shot the person in a non fatal area. I've seen tasers not even effect a person. I would almost bet there had been multiple calls to the residence and was well known to the LE. JMOO but I have a feeling this officers life was threatened. Law enforcement needs to be respected imho.
I do have to say Barney Fife made me laugh for the rest of the trip home. It still makes me laugh too. I guess i was scary cause I had been crying!😂 Most of the time they are very kind and respectful. My daughter got a ticket the other day in a speed trap on the way from taking me to the doctor out of town. He was so sweet and even dropped it down as low as he could so it wouldn't cost too much. I've mainly had good experiences with cops except Barney. Lol

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