Few situations are as potentially inflam matory as a police shooting of a young, unarmed civilian.
Which is why Police Commissioner Ray Kelly should be commended for the swiftness with which he disclosed the facts of the tragic death Monday night of 18-year-old Khiel Coppin.
Kelly played the 911 tape in which Coppin, who had been treated for mental illness, claimed to have a gun – a fact clearly verified by his mother, who said: “You heard it out of his mouth.” Indeed, neighbors told police at the scene in Bed-Stuy that he was armed.
According to Kelly, Coppin ignored officers’ demands that he drop an object he was brandishing – a hairbrush. Instead, he yelled: “Come get me. I have a gun. Let’s do this.”
When he kept on moving toward the officers, they opened fire, hitting him with eight shots. That sounds an awful lot like “suicide by cop,” where the troubled victim deliberately provokes a confrontation that ends in police gunfire.
It remains a tragedy, of course, particularly since Coppin turns out not to have been armed. But all available information suggested the youth was carrying a gun and vowing to use it – though a lawyer for the family disputed this, suggesting there may yet be an attempt to exploit the tragedy.
Hopefully, Commissioner Kelly’s calm, matter-of-fact presentation of the evidence will set the public’s mind at ease.
He certainly got off to a good start.