Overview
- Back-to-back police shootings on Jan. 8 in the West Village and at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital left two men dead and triggered NYPD Force Investigation Division reviews.
- In the Manhattan case, officers fired after a 37-year-old pointed what looked like a gun that was later identified as a realistic air pistol; in Brooklyn, officers shot a man who had barricaded himself with a sharp object after Tasers failed.
- Mayor Zohran Mamdani waited roughly 16 hours to comment publicly, then pledged to work with Commissioner Jessica Tisch to ensure thorough and swift investigations and called the incidents devastating.
- Commissioner Tisch praised the officers’ actions as heroic and both incidents will undergo exhaustive review, with reports describing friction between NYPD leadership and City Hall over the mayor’s response.
- The state attorney general’s Office of Special Investigation said it would probe the West Village case, as elected officials condemned a separate Queens protest where participants chanted support for Hamas and Mamdani later called the language unacceptable.