'Fog of War': Video of Shooting That Killed Anti-Crime Officer Released

The footage is from multiple perspectives. There was always going to be just one outcome.

The NYPD’s recently released video of the Sept. 29 Bronx shooting that took the lives of Police Officer Brian Mulkeen and a Binghamton resident, Antonio Lavance Williams, assembled from the body-worn cameras of five officers, shows what might otherwise have been a routine situation for anti-crime officers rapidly devolve into tumult.  

Unanswered Questions 

Introduced and narrated by NYPD Deputy Chief Kevin Maloney, the Commanding Officer of the Force Investigation Division, the 13-minute video is punctuated by gunshots that would result in the department’s second friendly-fire death this year.

Although Chief Maloney says the video presents “relevant footage...that will allow you to gain a better understanding of the events...based on the facts as we know them at this time,” what follows leaves a trail of outstanding questions, few of which will likely ever be answered definitively, including why officers fired their semi-automatic pistols from a distance of at least 30 feet toward the spot where Officer Mulkeen had been wrestling with Mr. Williams.

“It’s a prime example of ‘the fog of war,’” said John DeCarlo, an Associate Professor in the Criminal Justice Department at the University of New Haven.

“Did these cops make a mistake? Yeah. But they were put in an environment where that was almost expected,” he said.

Pursuit, the potential of deadly force and darkness all conspired, he said. “How do you unpack all that when you’re running?” asked Professor DeCarlo, a former Chief of the Branford, Conn. Police Department.

Not Like Target Practice

Although those trained with firearms can hit a target at 35 feet on a firing range, the setting and situation the officers faced on that Bronx night—“running, chasing and being scared”—was far different, said James Mulvaney, an Adjunct Professor in the Law and Police Science Department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

Firing from a distance of at least 30 feet with a handgun, he said, is “not a shot you can make” in a live-action, adrenaline-drenched situation, he said “Pistols are designed for 15 feet.”

What resulted on East 229th St. on that late September night was “contagion shooting,” Professor DeCarlo said.

“Cops are overexcited, they’re frightened, they’re unsure of what to do and there’s too much information coming through and they make mistakes,” he said.

Prefacing the video, Chief Maloney says investigations into police-involved shootings “can last a year or more,” adding that “interviews are still being conducted and video is still being analyzed.”

What is known is that just days before the incident, a shootout between two groups of men took place at Edenwald Houses, a sprawling public-housing development of 40 buildings on nearly 50 acres bisected by East 229th St. At least six of those men fired weapons that night, Chief Maloney said. The NYPD responded by assigning additional anti-crime officers to patrol what already was a problematic neighborhood.

‘He’s Reaching for It!’

At 12:29 on Sept. 29, Anti-Crime Officers Mulkeen, Wichers and Mahon pulled up in front of 1135 East 229th St. to question two men (Other than for Office Mulkeen, the NYPD did not release the first names of the other officers present). While one stayed put, the other, Mr. Williams, ran, crossing the street.

Officer Mahon stayed with the second man and radioed for backup while Officers Mulkeen and Wichers ran after Mr. Williams. As seen from Officer Wichers’s camera—Officer Mulkeen was the only one of six officers involved in the incident to not activate his—the two caught up to him within 10 seconds on a path adjacent to 1128 East 229th St.

Officer Mulkeen was then locked in battle with Mr. Williams on the ground, while Officer Wichers, who appeared to remain standing, also tried to subdue him. About 35 seconds after the officers caught up to Mr. Williams, a cry sounded of “He’s reaching for it!”—in apparent reference to a revolver, later determined to have been loaded, Mr. Williams was carrying.

A few seconds later, what sounded like a muffled gunshot went off, then another and then three pierced the air in quick succession, all five coming from what would later be determined to have been Officer Mulkeen’s gun. Officer Wichers then fired once, from a distance of about five feet.

Backups Arrive

The gunfire occurred just as three other anti-crime officers—Sgt. Valentino, Detective Beddows and Police Officer Figueroa—pull up in front of 1128 229th St.

All three discharged their firearms within moments of arriving, with at least one of the officers, Sergeant Valentino, and even all three, as well as Officer Mahon, firing from a distance of about 30 feet, or even further, from where Officer Mulkeen and Mr. Williams are on the ground.

In total 15 shots were discharged, Officer Mulkeen and Sergeant Valentino firing five rounds each, Officer Figueroa two, and Detective Beddows and Officers Wichers and Mahon once each.

Since about two years ago, NYPD-issued service-use firearms are all 9 mm. semi-automatic pistols, all of them with relatively heavy 12-pound trigger pull weights, which firearms experts say can compromise accuracy, particularly under stress and especially without sufficient training for combat situations.  

'How Much Do They Get?'

“How much training to they get in these run-and-shoot situations? It’s a big thing,” Professor Mulvaney said. “Going into street crimes, you should get this extra training. For a specialized squad, that’s their job. How much is enough training? I’ve never heard anyone say, ‘it’s enough.’”

Professor DeCarlo said there were apparent solutions to diminish the potential for the types of errors that lead to deaths, unnecessary or even otherwise, during police-involved shootings. One was to get rid of guns, or to devise a technology that neutralized guns. Neither of those is remotely likely.

Another is to take the time to train officers “to a high level.” Although the latter is the more realistic, the political will to do so—meaning first finding and then allocating the money to pay for it—also makes that solution unlikely.  

“I assure you it’s not enough,” Professor DeCarlo said of police training. “There is neither the time nor the money to train cops like they should be trained—especially with firearms, because it’s a perishable skill.”

He suggested that professionalizing the police, along the lines of how the FBI prepares its agents, and developing national standards, of which there currently are none, could also lessen the potential for deadly mistakes.

“What they do now is that they train to protect municipalities against lawsuits, instead of training them to do better at their jobs,” he said of municipalities and police officers.

Missing an Element

Professor Mulvaney said the video footage missed one key element—the perspective from Officer Mulkeen’s body-worn camera. Although he said situations such as this one demand that an officer concentrate on his or her weapon and any suspect, there are mechanisms whereby cameras begin recording automatically, such as when an officer gets out of a car, draws a weapon or shots are fired.

“We don’t have a real good sense of what happens when they grab the guy,” because of the nonexistent footage. Or, he said, of when the officer is shot.

Police have not said who fired the shots that killed Officer Mulkeen, who was hit twice, or Mr. Williams.

The Force Investigation Division and the Bronx District Attorney’s office are continuing their investigations, Chief Maloney said. He said their respective findings will be released to the public following more interviews and forensic tests.

Easy to Second-Guess

They also will be presented to the NYPD’s Use of Force Review Board, which will then determine whether the officers’ use of force was justified and within the NYPD’s department guidelines.

But, Professor Mulvaney said that, inevitably, some purported answers to lingering questions about the shooting following the release of the video were instances of “Monday-morning quarterbacking.”

“I don’t know if all the training in the world can prevent that,” he said of friendly-fire deaths. “Stuff happens real fast.”