North America

NYPD plainclothes officer shot in head

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A plainclothes police officer with the New York Police Department has been shot in the head, police said.

The 25-year-old police officer, Brian Moore, was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head while he was sitting inside an unmarked police car in New York City, police commissioner Bill Bratton said Saturday during a press conference.

Moore and his partner, Erik Jansen, were shopping Saturday evening, when they started questioning a man they suspected of carrying a gun.

“The man immediately removed the firearm from his waistband and turned in the direction of the officers and deliberately fired several times at the vehicle, striking Officer Moore in the head,” Bratton said. No weapon has been recovered.

Moore was undergoing surgery but listed in stable condition Saturday.

A heavy police presence was reported in Queens with officers walking on roofs and searching the neighborhood house by house.

The shooter was identified as 35-year-old Demitrius Blackwell, who was later arrested inside a house on a block he resided near the crime scene, Bratton said.

The incident is the fifth in as many months in New York.

Two NYPD officers were ambushed and killed in December by a gunman while sitting in their patrol car in Brooklyn.

Investigators said at the time that the attacker wanted to avenge police for the death of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed African Americans whose death by police triggered nationwide protests last year.

The US is once again on edge with tensions running high over police brutality.

Many US cities have been the site of daily demonstrations since April 19, when African-American Freddie Gray, 25, died of a severe spine injury he sustained a week earlier while being arrested by police in Baltimore, Maryland.

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