. . . they ain't too smart
How did a routine police stop for fare evasion on the L train escalate to the point where two NYPD officers shot four people—including the alleged farebeater, two bystanders, and a fellow cop? At a press conference after the shooting, which happened at the Sutter Avenue L train stop in Brownsville around 3 p.m. on Sunday, Mayor Eric Adams praised the work of the two cops. If you had only seen the mayor's tweet on the incident, you might have believed that a cop had been shot by a suspect. In fact, the cop either shot himself or was shot by his partner—they were the only people to fire their guns in this case.
"First of all, thank God our officers are okay and clearly they averted an even greater tragedy with a person with over 20 arrests, a real career criminal," Adams said.
According to the police department's version of events, two cops from the 73rd Precinct assigned to "quality-of-life" duty on the transit system saw a man, 37-year-old Derell Mickles, enter through the emergency gate without paying. They followed Mickles up the three flights of stairs to the elevated tracks and asked him to stop.
"At a certain point on the platform, the male mutters the words, you know, 'I'm going to kill you if you don't stop following,'" NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey told reporters. "The officers are asking him to take his hands out of his pockets. They become aware that he has a knife in his pocket. They give numerous commands. The male basically challenges the officers, 'No, you're going to have to shoot me.'"
When a northbound L train pulled into the station, Maddrey said that Mickles got on the train, and the officers followed him, commanding him to get off the train and come with them. Both cops shot their Tasers at Mickles, and both were "ineffective."
"The male jumps back off of the train onto the platform, and at one point he's advancing on one of the officers with his knife," Maddrey said. "The officer stands back. He draws his weapon, and then both officers at this point fire. They fire multiple rounds, and the male goes down. They're able to handcuff him and subdue him."
Maddrey said that while the officers were handcuffing Mickles, one realized that he had been shot. Graphic video taken by a bystander and posted on Reddit appears to show this moment, though in the video, it happens on the train, not the platform.
"Dude I'm shot, help!" an NYPD officer says in the video while leaning over Mickles, who is groaning, bloody, and handcuffed. Both cops stand up and examine the officer's wounds. "God dammit!" one says.
"Yeah, cause they shootin' recklessly!" a voice behind the camera shouts. "He shot his own fucking partner!"
Two bystanders, a woman and a 49-year-old man, were also shot. Another graphic video appears to show the male bystander on the floor of a different train car. The woman was "grazed" and is in stable condition, while the man was hit in the head. Mickles was shot "numerous times in the body and in the abdomen area," Maddrey said. Both Mickles and the male bystander are in critical condition as of Monday morning, according to Gothamist. The wounded officer, who was shot below his armpit, is expected to make a full recovery.
At the press conference, the NYPD's deputy commissioner for public information deflected a question about why police Tasers seemingly keep malfunctioning in high-profile shootings—just this past Friday, the NYPD fatally shot 38-year-old Vilmond Jean Baptiste in his bathtub, after he allegedly attacked police with a knife and after a cop's Taser failed to work.
How many rounds did the NYPD officers fire? Why did the cops seemingly fire into a crowded subway car? The NYPD did not answer a list of our questions, and instead pointed us to video of the press conference, and a still photograph that purports to show the knife that Mickles was allegedly carrying.
Mickles's mother, Gloria Holloway, told Gothamist that her son works as a chef and carries a pocket knife for work. Holloway was informed of her son's shooting by a reporter who came to her home to ask her about it. Holloway said that the NYPD merely slipped a business card underneath her door.
"They just shot him, then didn’t bother to get in touch with anybody related to him?" Holloway said. "And left a card here at the damn door?"
Both the mayor and the MTA's CEO, Janno Lieber, said that given the number of cameras trained on the incident, what happened on the train platform will become clear to New Yorkers.
"We have cameras on the platform, cameras in the mezzanine, so there will be no question of what took place," Lieber said.
The MTA referred our request for the footage to the NYPD. In a statement to Hell Gate, agency spokesperson Tim Minton cited a completely different incident in a different borough, on a different day, in which police apparently took a loaded gun off of someone trying to evade the fare on a bus on Monday in Queens. "The NYPD is responsible for transit fare evasion enforcement, which has frequently resulted in arrests of felons with active warrants and, as recently as earlier today, recovery of weapons that otherwise could have risked riders' safety," Minton said, not mentioning the fact that it was cops shooting guns in the subway system that actually, not hypothetically, "risked riders' safety."
Minton added, "We are grateful that when officers stopped a fare evader Monday morning on a Q113 bus, they not only removed a wanted criminal, but also seized his loaded gun, removing a threat to other riders."
The NYPD did not respond to our request for camera footage. It's also unclear if the police department even has the knife that Mickles was allegedly carrying.
In 2023, the NYPD spent an extra $151 million on overtime so that officers could patrol the subways and address "quality-of-life" crimes like farebeating, resulting in 1,900 more arrests for fare evasion and 32,000 more summonses—which works out to around $4,200 per arrest or summons, to catch people whose total unpaid fares only amounted to roughly $104,000.
Brooklyn Councilmember Sandy Nurse, whose district includes the Sutter Avenue station, said she was "outraged and saddened" by the shooting.
"A person’s life is worth more than a $2.90 fare," Nurse wrote in a statement. "We urgently need a full independent investigation and the immediate public release of the involved officers' body cam footage to assess how this incident unfolded. No one's life should be endangered over fare evasion, and our city and state must confront the pressing need for free, accessible public transit for all New Yorkers, ensuring that it is not just a privilege for those who can afford it."