BREAKING: A man was seriously injured when he was struck by a cop car on the Upper West Side https://t.co/JEaRpXKcj2 pic.twitter.com/ovpilOh6Q3
— NBC New York (@NBCNewYork) April 13, 2014
A police car struck an elderly homeless man on 78th street and Broadway around 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, according to early reports. The Daily News has some details:
At least two uniformed officers from the 20th Precinct were driving northbound on Broadway, near 78th St., when the car slammed into the senior around 1:30 p.m., the source and witnesses said.
FDNY medics rushed the man, who was in cardiac arrest, to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital where he was listed in serious condition.
The officers, riding in a marked police car with blaring lights and sirens, were not injured, the source said. It was unclear whether the cops were responding to a 911 call.
“Just at the site, pedestrian is awake and talking and in stable condition,” Councilwoman Helen Rosenthal told us via twitter.
We will update this as we learn more.
Hold on! I thought the police had a responsibility to protect us not murder us? Wrong again.
There was a police woman looking down at her i/phone in a trafic police car at the crossroads on 72nd st. last weekend. And we pay these jerks?
What a horrible comment. “these jerks”?? Do you realize that the starting pay for an NYPD officer is about $26,000/year, that they are spit on, attacked, shot at, and ridiculed by people like you who have no idea what it’s like to have to wear a gun to work. She can’t look at her phone? How many times a day do you look at your phone? Why can’t she? Because for $26,000/year she should simply spend her day protecting people like you? It’s one thing to criticize their policies and practices, it’s another to suggest that NYPD officers commit murder and are “jerks”. Thousands of brave men and women wake up every day, put on a uniform, and protect us. Without question there are going to be some bad apples, as there will in any profession, but by and large they are good honest people who have an incredibly difficult job.
Cops have it bad. Drug War era cops especially so.
Not sure where you got the $26,000 but according to nypdrecruit.com, the starting annual compensation for a recruit is $44,744 and increases to $58,786 after three and a half years.
Commence the hand-wringing!!
I understand the man stepped out mid-block from between parked cars.
@ jui: But I don’t see the connection between what a traffic cop does in her police vehicle on 72nd Street a week ago and this accident. Would you explain, please?
Wally, do you suggest he was angling towards the crosswalk? The photo above shows the man fell in the middle of the intersection, with his shopping bag closer to the crosswalk. Because of the landscaped medians, people can’t / don’t really cross Broadway mid-block. It would be good to see what the NYPD cruiser’s dashboard cam shows of the incident.
Best wishes to this man for his recovery.
We all view these through our own lens, but NYPD cruisers and vehicles have been involved in a slew of dangerous crashesin the past twelve months.
Apart from the toll of lives altered forever – including those of our valued NYPD officers – we do end up paying for tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, tens to hundreds of thousands in medical costs, hundreds of thousands to millions in lawsuits that the city must spend time defending and potentially pay out. So, yeah, hand wringing. Me no likey.
Whether this pedestrian was homeless or not, lucid or not, slow of reflex, reckless, or suicidal, I hope we get these details reported as well as: the speed the cruiser was going, what its dashboard cam shows of the collision, and why the NYPD cruiser charged with serving and protecting the public failed to stop in time before knocking a senior citizen senseless. (I’ve seen conflicting reports about the sirens, whether the officers were responding to an emergency call or “intermittently” trying to pull someone over or buzzing themselves past red lights, and whether the victim had the right of way).
Hopefully Collision Investigative Squad can provide some of this info. I’m always shocked when it’s not included.