The cops involved in the shooting of an emotionally disturbed man in Harlem “acted appropriately,” NYPD officials said Wednesday after releasing video that showed the man pulling a black wallet out of his pocket and pretending it was a gun.
Police also said audio from cops’ body-worn cameras captured the shooting victim, Michael Cordero, 34, claiming he was armed.
Cordero, who also had a knife in his pocket, is in stable condition at St. Luke’s Hospital with a gunshot wound to his hip, police said. On Wednesday night, police charged him with burglary, weapon possession, menacing, criminal contempt and pot possession.
But his family said he should have been treated like the troubled person local cops know him to be.
“There is a serious issue in this city with regard to the way the police deal in situations with those who are suffering from mental illness,” Cordero family lawyer Sanford Rubenstein said. “Clearly, when his mother called (911) and explained that Michael was bipolar and schizophrenic, specially trained officers should have been sent.
“They were not.”
The incident happened about 5:50 p.m. Tuesday in a building on W. 114th St. between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvds. Two officers and a lieutenant from the 28th Precinct responding to a 911 call about a man with a gun were directed to the fourth floor of the building, said Chief Kevin Maloney, who runs the Force Investigation Division.
Cordero’s mother also called 911 and identified her live-in son by name, with his father then getting on the call and saying he was “afraid to come out of the apartment…because he’s in fear for his safety with his son out in the hallway,” Maloney said.
When the trio of cops got out of the elevator, Maloney said, the suspect headed towards them.
Video taken from a camera in the hallway released by the NYPD shows Cordero walking down the hall, then reaching into his pocket and seemingly pretending his wallet is a gun.
The encounter was also captured on the cops’ body-worn cameras, but the NYPD has stopped releasing video in which officers fire their guns.
Maloney, quoting audio from the cops’ camera footage, said one cop told Cordero to “Stay right there!” and “Get your hands out of your pocket!”
But Cordero, Maloney said, told the cops “What do you mean, take my hands out of my pocket?” — and then twice told the officers “I’ve got a gun.”
At that point, one of the cops fired three rounds from his service weapon, hitting Cordero. The entire encounter took six seconds, Maloney said.
“He goes into his pocket, says he has a gun, pulls a black object up, takes it in a two-handed stance, covering the top of it as if he were racking a slide,” Maloney said. “At that point, our cops had less than a second to make a decision. They fired.
“So, in my opinion they acted appropriately,” he said.
The officer, firing from 15 to 20 feet away, has been on the force for 2½ years and had never before fired his weapon.
Cordero has a troubled past. He was busted Dec. 19 on the same street for kicking and banging on a woman’s door so hard he broke the door’s peephole. When cops moved in to arrest him he allegedly fought back, then spit on one officer and bit another’s hand, drawing blood. The case is still pending.
In a second case in the same building, Cordero was accused of banging on an apartment door and yelling at a woman who has an order of protection against him. Cordero was arrested on misdemeanor criminal contempt charges. That case is also pending.
Cordero, whose brother Salvatore Cordero is a NYPD Auxiliary captain, has two daughters ages 9 and 14. His parents say their son is sick, but not dangerous.
“We’ve been asking for help for months and months and months,” said the father, also named Salvatore Cordero, 57, “This is what we didn’t want to happen.
“We’re exhausted.”
Cordero’s father and mother, Betty Ramos, 59, said that shortly before the shooting they had asked their son to leave the apartment because he was agitated and needed to cool off.
After the shooting, Cordero was screaming and repeatedly saying, “I didn’t deserve this,” the father said.
Officials said cops administered first aid immediately and called for an ambulance and for police to clear a street path for EMS to get to the hospital quicker. But the family said it took 40 minutes for an ambulance to arrive.
The FDNY did not respond to questions about when EMS arrived and when they left with Cordero.
With John Annese
