What We Know About the Philadelphia Police Shooting
A gunman surrendered early Thursday after a tense, hourslong standoff with the police in which six officers were shot.
A gunman surrendered early Thursday after a tense, hourslong standoff with the police in Philadelphia, the authorities said, but only after he unleashed a “barrage of bullets” that wounded six officers and terrified residents.
The standoff began when officers tried to serve a narcotics warrant and ended more than seven hours later with the suspect emerging from a house with his arms held over his head.
Here is what we know about the suspect, the standoff and the wounded officers.
The gunman was taken into custody and identified.
In a tweet at 12:08 a.m. Thursday, Sgt. Eric Gripp of the Philadelphia Police Department said that the suspect was in custody and that SWAT team members were clearing the house.
The city’s police commissioner identified the suspect as Maurice Hill, 36, who has an extensive criminal history.
According to court records, Mr. Hill pleaded guilty to two federal gun crimes in June 2008 for owning a loaded, semi-automatic handgun, as well as a revolver with seven rounds, both of which he was barred from having because he had previously been convicted of a felony. A judge sentenced him in 2010 to four and a half years in federal prison.
Also in June 2008, Mr. Hill pleaded guilty to a host of state charges, including fleeing an officer, attempting to elude an officer, driving under the influence and resisting arrest. In June 2011, he pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, and in November 2012, he pleaded guilty to perjury.
President Trump alluded to the suspect’s criminal history in a Twitter post on Thursday morning, saying he “should never have been allowed to be on the streets.”
Mr. Hill was not injured in the shooting but was taken to a hospital early Thursday and later released, CBS Philadelphia reported.
A lawyer for Mr. Hill, Shaka Johnson, told the station that he spoke with his client during the standoff and told him, “You’ve got to surrender, man.”
The wounded officers are all expected to recover.
The officers were taken to local hospitals, where they were treated and released, the police said. One officer had a graze wound in his head.
The city’s mayor, Jim Kenney, said that he had spoken with all six officers at the hospitals and that they were in good spirits. He said that seeing the young sons of the officer who was grazed by a bullet made him realize how their lives could have changed drastically had things gone a little differently.
“Just a little bit more and those two will grow up without their dad,” Mr. Kenney said during a news conference Wednesday night.
A narcotics warrant turned into a seven-hour standoff.
The episode began around 4:30 p.m. when police officers tried to serve a narcotics warrant at a home on North 15th Street in the Nicetown-Tioga section of the city.
They were met with gunfire. The police commissioner, Richard Ross Jr., said shots were fired as officers were moving toward the kitchen in the back of the house. They returned fire, he said, and some jumped out of windows to escape a “barrage of bullets.”
Heather Logan, 47, who lives about a block from the shooting, said she dived for safety when the shots started.
“We were ducking behind cars,” she said. “It was like Beirut out here for a little bit.”
SWAT teams converged on the home, and the gunman continued firing on the responding officers, including the commissioner and a SWAT team vehicle, the authorities said. Officers tried to communicate with the gunman by phone and by a bullhorn. Other people were also inside the home during the standoff; it was unclear whether they lived there.
Mr. Johnson, the lawyer, said Mr. Hill called him “in a panic” around 8:30 p.m., and he tried to convince Mr. Hill to surrender.
Shortly after 9:30 p.m., Sergeant Gripp said on Twitter that two officers who had been inside the house had been safely evacuated, but that the suspected gunman remained holed up.
Around midnight, the gunman emerged from his house with his hands raised and was taken into custody.“The prisoners that were in there were also unharmed,” Commissioner Ross said.
The mayor pushed for tighter gun control laws.
Mayor Kenney, a Democrat, used the spotlight of the standoff to push for tougher gun control measures and admonished policymakers for their lack of action. His comments echoed similar calls from the mayors of Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, after the gun massacres in those cities this month.
“Our officers need help, they need help with gun control,” Mr. Kenney said at the Wednesday night news conference. “They don’t deserve to be shot at with an unlimited supply of weapons and unlimited supply of bullets.”
“This government,” he said, “both on the federal and the state level, don’t want to do anything about getting these guns off the streets and getting them out of the hands of criminals.”
While cities can enforce public-carrying restrictions, Pennsylvania — like many states — does not allow local governments to regulate firearms. Other states limit cities from passing their own laws.
Compounding that challenge, each of the 50 states and the nation’s capital have their own set of laws, giving the country a patchwork of policies. Nearby states with weaker regulations make it more challenging for cities like Philadelphia to enforce whatever restrictive gun control measures they might enact.
New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland — states that border Pennsylvania — have fairly strong gun laws, according to experts. But other nearby states like Ohio, West Virginia and Virginia, have among the weakest.
A criminal justice expert said it was rare for so many officers to be wounded at one time.
Alfred Titus, a professor of criminal justice at John Jay College, said in an interview Wednesday night that six police officers being shot while serving a warrant was “very unusual.”
But Dr. Titus said there’s an increasing perception among police officers that people are emboldened to “not give themselves up” and possibly turn routine interactions with the police into violence.
“The unusual is now becoming the not so unusual,” said Dr. Titus, who was a homicide detective and hostage negotiator with the New York Police Department before he retired in 2016. “Things like this are starting to happen more, and it’s a very difficult time to be in law enforcement for that reason.”
Reporting was contributed by Jon Hurdle, Neil Vigdor, Mihir Zaveri, Jacey Fortin, Heather Murphy and Elisha Brown.
Post a Comment