He never dropped his gun.
The off-duty police officer shot dead by friendly fire while chasing a suspect down a drizzly East Harlem street should have immediately thrown down his weapon when confronted by fellow cops, police said yesterday.
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Instead, Omar Edwards, who is black, whirled around and pointed the gun toward Officer Andrew Dunton, who is white, after the cop yelled, “Police! Stop! Drop the gun! Drop the gun!’ ” according to NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
That’s when Dunton unleashed a fusillade of bullets on Edwards, in plainclothes, who had been running after a man he caught breaking into his car Thursday at about 10:30 p.m.
“He was coming off duty so he had his weapon, but wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest,” Mayor Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. “Other cops thought he was running and threatening the guy that he was chasing and one of the officers apparently fired.”
Bloomberg visited with Edwards’ family for about 20 minutes today in their Brooklyn apartment. He did not speak to reporters on the way out.
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Migueal Goitia, the car break-in suspect who set off the tragic chain of events, echoed the account of Dunton’s colleagues that the cops identified themselves and demanded that Edwards drop his gun, police said.
Dunton, 30, who had a clean police record and had never before fired his weapon in his 4½-year career, was “devastated” that he killed a brother in blue, sources said.
Among the developments in the friendly-fire tragedy:
* Edwards may have violated NYPD guidelines on how to handle confrontations with police when in plainclothes by not giving up his pursuit and surrendering.
* The NYPD immediately ordered all officers to undergo confrontation training.
* Dunton and his two colleagues were assigned to administrative duties pending the outcome of the investigation.
* Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau said his office is investigating the incident, as it does with all police shootings.
Dunton, part of an anti-crime task force attached to the 25th Precinct, had been patrolling the neighborhood in an unmarked car with another officer and a sergeant.
As they cruised north on First Avenue past 125th Street, they saw an armed man furiously chasing another and moved in.
Little did they know that minutes earlier, Edwards, a 25-year-old father of two, had just left his job at the Housing Police bureau on East 124th Street. He had checked out early to start a planned vacation.
As he headed toward his Nissan, police said Edwards saw Goitia, 42, looting it. The driver-side window had been smashed and Goitia was removing the GPS system, sources said.
The two wrestled but Goitia, who has prior arrests for assault and robbery, wriggled out of his shirt and broke free.
He darted up Second Avenue and onto East 125th Street with Edwards — gun in hand — in hot pursuit.
At that moment, Dunton’s patrol car was crossing 125th Street on First Avenue. The cruiser nearly collided with Goitia.
Dunton leaped from the passenger door and then crouched behind it for cover as the two other cops also exited.
He shouted at Edwards to drop his weapon, but Edwards spun around with the gun still in his grip.
Dunton fired his 9 mm Glock six times, striking Edwards in the left arm, left hip and the left side of the back, mortally wounding him.
As the other officers chased down Goitia, Dunton cuffed Edwards, according to procedure, and waited for help.
The first two shots that struck Edwards missed vital organs, but the third went through his heart and left lung, the Medical Examiner’s Office later determined.
Within minutes of the shooting, two Emergency Service Unit medics began treating Edwards. They opened his shirt and discovered to their horror he was wearing a Police Academy T-shirt, then found his shield in his wallet.
He was pronounced dead at Harlem Hospital at 11:21 p.m.
Goitia was arrested minutes after the shooting and charged with petit larceny, auto stripping and resisting arrest. Goitia, who has been hospitalized several times for unknown reasons since his arrest, is expected to be arraigned today.
Edwards, who joined the force in July 2007, may not have followed NYPD Patrol Guide procedures that state what plainclothes or off-duty cops should do when confronted other officers.
But Noel Leader, co-founder of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, wasn’t ready to assign blame to Edwards.
“The immediate assumption is that a black man with a gun is a criminal and the white man is given the benefit of the doubt that there’s a possibility that he’s in law enforcement,” Leader said.
“That’s why we’ve never seen a white undercover cop killed by another police officer mistaking them for a perpetrator.”
Edwards’ father, Ricardo, said that he felt the NYPD should bear the blame.
“They are here to help us, but they are destroying each other,” he said. “I hope some kind of change will happen. It’s become a habit, this kind of incident.”
Additional reporting Kirsten Fleming and Irene Plagianos