NYP injure nine! Innocents, that is.

A man shot a co-worker on 33rd St. in Manhattan and then walked north towards the Empire State Building, carrying the gun in a bag. A man who saw the shooting followed the man and informed the police who were outside the building.   The police challenged him, he drew his weapon, and the police opened fire.  Nine innocent people were injured in various ways; at least four were shot.  I attribute the injured nine solely to the police because if the police had acted less like cowboys, only the intended victim would be dead. Is this the type of training they receive at the firing range and in psychology classes? Surely there was another way to stop the man without risking the injury of innocent people in the area.  (And in that area there are usual hundreds of people milling around, occasionally me.) I'm listening to Bloomberg at the moment trying to talk around the injured nine. It's not working! Some big lawsuits coming!

I'm now hearing a newscaster say that the police mitigated the loss. Just the opposite. Apparently, and to be confirmed later, the shooter, now dead, had an eight-bullet gun and he had used five to six of his bullets on his victim.  So how could he have caused all those additional injuries? The man had walked away with the gun in a black bag after shooting his intended victim.  The police at the Empire State Building, who had not seen the shooting, were told by of it by a man who had seen the initial shooting and who had followed the shooter.  The man who spoke to the police might have been a nut case.  How did the police know he was not? If the shooter were really interested in shooting others not involved in his grudge he would have done so at the time he shot his former boss.

A week ago, the police shot a man with mental problems who was carrying a butcher knife. They followed him for seven blocks from Times Square down Broadway in the middle of the day, cornered him and killed him, in one of the most crowded areas of New York. The police are just as dangerous as the other nuts out there with guns. Now I can't walk the streets of New York and feel safe.  In the future when I see the police I'll cross the street.

I'm still seeing headlines that a man shot nine people at the Empire State Building.  It's not true but why would we expect the news media to get it right. They so rarely do.

And the latest news:  apparently the disgruntled employee never did let off a second round at the Empire State Building.  If that's true, then the police killed one person (the shooter) and injured nine others.  Amazing, that Bloomberg stands in front of a microphone and calls the police heroes.  With heroes like we're all lucky we're still walking around!