NYPD Fatally Shoots Man Who Approached Officers With Knife in Brooklyn Apartment, Police Say
14th September 2024
Police shot and killed a man inside a Brooklyn apartment on Friday evening whom they said they were seeking in connection with three recent homicides. The incident marks the 12th fatal NYPD shooting this year, according to data tracked by Gothamist.
Police identified the man as 38-year-old Vilmond Jean Baptiste and said officers fatally shot him just before 5:30 p.m. at 485 East 21st St. in Flatbush. Members of the NYPD’s fugitive enforcement unit arrived at the apartment with an open-bench warrant for Baptiste, according to officials. When police entered the apartment, they found Baptiste in a bathtub fully dressed in a hoodie, the NYPD said.
Officers instructed Baptiste to get out of the bathtub when they saw he was holding a knife, Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said at a press conference on Friday night. They told him to drop the knife but he did not comply, according to Maddrey.
A sergeant at the scene tried to deploy his Taser to immobilize Baptise, but the effort did not work, Maddrey said. He said Baptiste at that point “jumped out of the tub and advanced on the officers.”
That will get you shot in most places. Stupidity is generally a capital crime. Think of it as evolution in action.
This story is, in itself, worth very little. People gather in cities; among those who gather are crazy people; crazy people often do crazy things; sometimes those crazy things get them shot by police.
I suspect, from the victim’s name and the location of the shooting, that he was Haitian. Of course, in these Woke times, any inquiry into the background of an alleged criminal, much less any revelation of that knowledge to the reading public, is Not Allowed if said alleged criminal is a member (or perceived member) of one of the plethora of Fashionable Victim Groups that hand-wringers just love to wring their hands about.
And, of course, crowds of Activists gather when such things occur, not because they’re just the traditional rubberneckers that customarily gather whenever something unusual occurs among the People Gathered In Cities, but because Activists are always on the hunt for things to be Activist about, such as a member of a Fashionable Victim Group getting inconvenienced (properly or not) by any Minions Of The Man, even when The Man and his (her? its?) minions are also members of a similar Fashionable Victim Group.
I predict that there will be Activists flocking to cameras, TV and Influencer, to decry a member of a Fashionable Victim Group being inconvenienced (properly or not), because that’s what Activists do. It doesn’t matter whether he was guilty or innocent–what matters is to what Political Tribe he can be useful.
Feh.