Police Shoot Mt. Vernon Officer Outside New York Courthouse

[CPDlife4ME]

Jan 25, 2008 10:45 pm US/Central

WHITE PLAINS - Westchester county police shot and killed an off-duty Mount Vernon police officer yesterday afternoon as the officer held a gun on another man and leaned over him outside a county Social Services office, police said.

The slain officer was identified as 23-year-old Christopher A. Ridley, who was appointed to the force Jan. 9, 2006, said Daniel Jackson, White Plains deputy commissioner of public safety.

Law enforcement officials released few details of the shooting, which sent people diving for cover on a busy block of Court Street, where one of the county's top restaurants adjoins a Social Services building in which a controversial homeless shelter operated until recently.

According to several witnesses, the events that led to the shooting started when two men were involved in an altercation at Court Street and Martine Avenue. A third man was seen approaching the two to break up the fight, witnesses said. The third man was then seen helping one of the other men walk away. It could not be confirmed last night if the third man was the Mount Vernon officer.

Ridley's body remained outside the Social Services building at 85 Court St. for several hours after the shooting, which happened shortly before 5 p.m. White Plains Public Safety Commissioner Frank Straub - flanked by Mount Vernon Police Commissioner David Chong, Westchester County Public Safety Commissioner Thomas Belfiore and Westchester District Attorney Janet DiFiore - later held a news conference a few hundred feet from the building, disclosing that it was a local police officer under the tarp.

Straub, the only official who spoke, initially did not release the name of the slain officer until his family could be notified. He also would not identify the county officers who shot him, although he said some of them were being treated for trauma. He said there were no other injuries. He would not say whether a police weapon was used in the shooting.

One person was taken away in handcuffs about 6:30 p.m., but Straub would not identify him or say why he was taken into custody. He would not say if anyone had been charged in the incident.

Reached late last night, Mount Vernon Police Chief Joseph Pizzuti said, "It's clearly a tragedy." He said Ridley's father, a maintenance worker at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, had been notified, with the assistance of clergy, of his son's death.

Several Mount Vernon police officers at the scene, some in tears, declined to comment.

Straub said White Plains police took over the investigation from county police so that county police would not be in the position of investigating themselves. County police normally would have jurisdiction because the shooting occurred on county property.

Alfreda Burrus, 40, said she was coming out of 85 Court St. when she saw two men - including one with a gun in his belt - fighting near a group of homeless people waiting for a van that would take them to a shelter the county operates at the Grasslands Reservation in Mount Pleasant. The gun discharged as the two wrestled on the ground, then one of the men grabbed the gun, stood up and pointed the weapon at the man on the ground. Burrus said police rushed from the building at the sound of the gunshot and, standing behind the man holding the gun, ordered him to drop it.

Gunshots erupted when the man did not, she said.

The shooting was the second time in two years that a police officer from Westchester was shot and killed by another officer as he pointed a gun and leaned over a man lying on a sidewalk. In January 2006, 24-year-old Eric Hernandez, a New York City police officer who worked in the Bronx but grew up in White Plains, was shot as he pointed a gun at a man he believed had attacked him inside a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx. Hernandez died 12 days after he was shot, and his wake and funeral Mass were held only a few blocks from where yesterday's shooting occurred.

Hernandez, like the Mount Vernon officer killed yesterday, was in plainclothes. Hernandez did not respond to orders by uniformed officers to drop his gun.

Ridley's body remained uncovered on the street for about 30 minutes, clearly visible to hundreds of county workers peering down from the nine-story bank of windows in the county's Michaelian Office Building across Court Street, until police placed an orange tarp over the body and surrounded it with bright orange traffic cones about 5:30 p.m. By then, police had closed several streets in the heart of downtown as the evening rush was in full swing, including several blocks of Court and Quarropas streets.

More than a dozen county police cars and city firetrucks converged. Four news helicopters hovered overhead.

The shooting occurred only a day after Mayor Joseph Delfino and Public Safety Commissioner Straub held a news conference to announce that violent crime in the city in 2007 had dropped to the lowest level since 1965. The last two homicides occurred in March and August 2006, both within a few blocks of yesterday's shooting.

Both of those homicides - a legal secretary stabbed to death in a city parking garage and a 20-year-old man who was stabbed to death outside a Post Road deli - involved homeless men, a fact that incited a debate over County Executive Andrew Spano's decision to open a homeless shelter in the basement of the building where yesterday's shooting occurred. Spano closed the shelter a few months ago.

In announcing the drop in the city's crime rates, Delfino said improved public safety was a "key to attracting new residents and businesses," which have fueled the city's development boom. The trophy in the downtown redevelopment is the gleaming glass of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and its two 46-story condominium towers, which opened a month ago only two blocks from yesterday's shooting.

Delfino did not return phone calls last night.

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[greenlead]

This is terrible all around.

[Creeker]

This is bad. :mad:

Waiting for more details...

[bamfo]

An off-duty Mount Vernon, N.Y., police officer was shot and killed in downtown White Plains on Friday evening after he pulled his gun on another man and was fired at by Westchester County police officers, the authorities said.



My 9 News/WWOR-TV
Christopher Ridley, 23, was killed Friday.

Enlarge This Image

The scene of the shooting. The victim struggled with another man, and witnesses said that when Westchester County officers intervened, he was shot.
The slain officer, Christopher Ridley, 23, who witnesses said was not in uniform, was killed after a scuffle with two men outside the district offices of the Westchester County Department of Social Services at 85 Court Street, which sits next to a busy shopping mall in the heart of White Plains. The shooting came at a time when serious crimes in the city had reached their lowest levels in more than four decades.

Daniel Jackson, a spokesman for the White Plains police, said Officer Ridley joined the department in January 2006.

On Friday, witnesses described a chaotic scene and gave conflicting accounts of how the shooting occurred.

Victor Garcia, 26, a waiter who works at a restaurant nearby, said he saw two men fighting about 5 p.m. and then saw a car pull up. He said a man, later identified by the authorities as Officer Ridley, got out of the car and pulled his gun in an attempt to break up the fight.

Mr. Garcia said he then heard shots and saw two county police officers arrive at the scene.

“I saw police come from the courthouse,” he said. “They said, ‘Drop your weapon.’ ”

He said that instead of dropping the weapon, the person with the gun turned around, prompting the county officers to shoot.

Officer Ridley was hit twice in the chest. He was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

It was unclear whether the county officers realized that the man being fired at was a police officer.

The two county officers were taken to a hospital, where they were receiving counseling.

Another witness who was parking his car nearby and said he saw the scuffle said that the officers ordered the man to drop his weapon. That witness, who gave his name only as Brian, said he saw the person who later was killed fire several shots at a person he was struggling with.

“The cop told him to drop it, and I told him, ‘Drop the gun, they’re going to shoot you,’ ” he said.

The shooting occurred a few blocks from a newly revitalized Main Street retail strip and just a few doors down from Mulino’s, a popular Italian restaurant. The social services building on Court Street, where the two men were scuffling, was also once the site of a county drop-in center where homeless men were allowed to spend nights. The county bowed to pressure from city officials and business owners and announced in August that the drop-in center would be closed.

White Plains has been in the midst of an economic renaissance, and just last week city officials said that serious crimes had reached a low. There had not been a murder recorded in the city since May 2006.

Late Friday night there was still a major police presence at the scene of the shooting, with detectives and police officials milling behind yellow police tape as they investigated the shooting. Traffic from Mamaroneck Avenue, a major artery a block from Court Street, was blocked off.

Nate Schweber reported from White Plains. Mathew R. Warren contributed reporting.

[greenhead]

That is a sad situation for everyone involved.

[bamfo]

I actually met this person several times through my buddy in the Mt Vernon police department. Seemed to be a very nice guy. I just think it was an awful trajedy and mistake.

[mcsap]

I certainly do not know the whole story but...the last thing I will do while off duty and not in uniform is to try to break up a fight between two persons.

As long as nobody is getting seriously hurt , I'll call 911 and just observe. If I do anything , I would probably just get out and ID myself and say that I called 911 and the troops are enroute.

[SO explorer]

sad to hear something like this has happened, may the Officer Rest In Peace

[Question]

Can thy charge the assailant with a murder charge or is that too much of a stretch as a felony conviction may not be had?

[Googleit15]

Can thy charge the assailant with a murder charge or is that too much of a stretch as a felony conviction may not be had?

That would be to much of a stretch, this isn't law and order. LOL

[Roger Dat]

Funeral was today. Rest in peace Detective.

[Punisherthunder]

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host -
by the Divine Power of God -
cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

Amen.