"This horrifying video, which took a week to release, was years of failure in the making. Years of inadequate resources for mental health support. Years of building systems and responses that criminalize issues of poverty and mental health. Years of flooding the subway with wave after wave of law enforcement, and setting their focus on fare evasion.
“Leadership from our mayor was needed to address this tragedy and instead, he commended these officers for showing 'restraint.' He continues to fail when leadership is desperately needed and should be utterly ashamed of those comments. Our police are often asked to do too much in difficult conditions. They need leaders who will be clear when something clearly went wrong. This was blatant disregard for the life of this community, and officers growing ‘impatient’ is not a valid reason to use deadly force.
“Four people shot, one a fellow officer, one an innocent bystander who may never recover. Not a single shot needed to be fired at the moment officers fired into a train with people in it. I can only think of what our collective horror would be in a wealthier, whiter population and call us to that same outrage and purpose – to not only improve our tools and trainings for de-escalation, but fundamentally examine and shift the public safety approach that led to preventable violence.
“Lastly, if the mayor and NYPD officials are willing to deliberately misinform New Yorkers about body camera footage before it's made public, how can we ask New Yorkers to trust this administration now that the video is released and truth is exposed.”
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