Police Officer Eder Loor is living proof of how woefully off-base cop-brutality claims in this city can be — and when we say “living” proof, that may be thanks to a miracle.
Loor was stabbed in the face, neck and head Tuesday by a deranged man, Terrence Hale, who’d stopped taking his meds.
Loor’s doctors say he’s likely to fully recover — New York cops are tough cookies.
But Loor is hardly the first officer to be injured by mentally ill attackers. Yet when it’s the attacker who’s hurt, activists are quick to charge excessive force.
Make no mistake: Cops find themselves in these no-win situations far too often.
* On Easter, Mauricio Jacques threatened his wife and children — and stabbed two Bronx cops, who then fatally shot him.
* The same day, two other cops in The Bronx were stabbed, one seriously, in an encounter with 200-pound schizophrenic Benedy Abreu, who was later subdued.
What happens when cops escape harm?
* In a famous 1984 case, Officer Stephen Sullivan shot an unstable elderly Eleanor Bumpurs as she resisted eviction and threatened them with boiling lye and a knife. Public pressure led to manslaughter charges against Sullivan; he was acquitted.
* In 1999, cops shot Gidone Busch of Borough Park after he attacked them with a small hammer during a psychotic episode. That prompted another public outcry, but a grand jury refused to indict the cops.
* In 2007, the NYPD responded to a 911 call from 18-year-old Khiel Coppin’s mother. Coppin was cursing and yelling that he had a gun. Brandishing knives, he rushed the cops and reached into his shirt, pulling out what looked like a gun; the cops fired, fatally. But the object turned out to be a hairbrush, setting off weeks of second-guessing.
Such deaths are regrettable, of course.
But as the nearly tragic attack on Officer Loor this week shows, police face extremely dangerous threats in these cases.
They also must deal emotionally with the consequences of their actions: In 2008, Lt. Michael Pigott committed suicide after he ordered officers to taser Iman Morales (who was naked and swinging an 8-foot fluorescent light bulb from a ledge), causing him to fall 10 feet to his death.
Obviously, cops need to exercise restraint — when possible. And they do.
If only their critics could learn to do likewise.