By Rocco Parascandola and Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Activists targeted the Brooklyn home of an NYPD cop, accusing him of aggressively handling a protest over a police-involved shooting in a Brooklyn subway station a day earlier, the Daily News has learned.
The protesters showed up at the cop’s home in Sunset Park about 9:45 p.m. Monday and began yelling at him from the sidewalk after spotting him on his front porch.
“We want justice! We want Justin!” the protesters screamed, using the cop’s first name after he retreated into his home.
The officer called 911 as the protesters set fire to an American flag and threw objects at the aluminum-sided home. When on-duty cops arrived, the crowd quickly dispersed and no arrests were made, officials said.
“This episode is just further proof that these anti-police activists aren’t actually interested in ‘justice’ or ‘accountability’ — they are trying to stop police officers from doing our job by targeting us for harassment or worse,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said Wednesday.
The union want to make sure “those who terrorized our brother and his family are brought to justice,” Hendry added.
The NYPD’s Threat Assessment Unit was notified of the protest at the officer’s home and cops have been sitting outside his house keeping watch since Monday, a police source said.
On Sunday, the targeted officer, who joined the NYPD in January 2023, helped handle a protest outside 73rd Precinct stationhouse over the Sept. 15 subway shooting that left four wounded, including a fellow officer, by police bullets.
An activist who felt the officer was overly aggressive in his response to the stationhouse protest took a picture of him. No arrests were made at the Sunday night protest.
“An individual took a photo of an officer and posted their personal address on social media,” an NYPD spokesman said. The targeted officer was not part of the Sept. 15 subway incident.
In a social media video, Terrell Harper, one of the protesters who showed up outside the cop’s home, recaps the incident, accusing the targeted officer of being “very aggressive” against protesters the day before, saying the officer “put his hands” on a few of them outside the stationhouse.
“You all shot the subway up — we didn’t do it,” Harper added. “Now we’re going to start doing house visits to everyone in that goddamn (police) station.”
“It’s all about making them feel it,” Harper added. “It’s all about making them scared of us. It’s all about making them quit their f—ing job.”
In the Sept. 15 subway shooting, two officers opened fire on knife-wielding fare beater Derrell Mickles at the Sutter Ave. subway station.
Cops critically wounded Mickles and two bystanders — and one of the two cops who opened fire was struck by his partner’s bullet. One of the innocent bystanders was critically wounded in the shooting, while the wounded cop and second bystander are expected to recover.
Mickles was ultimately charged with assaulting an officer, attempted assault and weapons possession.
Body camera footage released Friday vividly shows the sequence of events leading up to the decision by two police officers to fire.
Mickles repeatedly ignored orders to drop his knife and the NYPD has said the officers were operating within guidelines to deal with an attack. But the bodycam footage was cited by critics who said police had no reason to open fire in a crowded subway car.
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