At 66 years old, Denise Danner had a “history of erratic behavior,” according to her neighbors. On Tuesday, police were called to her Bronx apartment because she was naked and wielding a pair of scissors. A police sergeant who responded to the scene was able to talk the woman into dropping the scissors without harming her but, according to the New York Police Department, the woman then approached the officer with a bat after dropping the scissors. The officer then shot Danner in the torso. She was transported to a local medical center, where she died.
The officer, Hugh Barry, is an eight-year veteran of the department. He has been placed on "modified assignment," meaning he is stripped of his badge and gun pending an investigation,CNN reported.
The investigation, conducted by the department's force investigation division, will seek to determine why Barry opted for his service revolver over his Taser, [New York Police Department assistant chief Larry] Nikunen said.
In a statement, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. called the shooting "an outrage," and accused the police department of "excessive force" against Danner.
"While I certainly understand the hard work that our police officers undertake to keep the streets of our city safe every single day, I also know what excessive force looks like," Diaz said. "This elderly woman was known to the police department, yet the officer involved in this shooting failed to use discretion to either talk her down from her episode or, barring that, to use his stun gun."
"That is totally unacceptable," he added.
"We failed," [NYPD Commissioner James ] O'Neill said on Wednesday, according to CBS New York. "We do have policies and procedures for handling emotionally disturbed people. It looks like that some of those procedures were not followed."
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the shooting was tragic and unacceptable. “It should never have happened,” de Blasio said during a news conference Wednesday afternoon. “The NYPD’s job is to protect life.”
The case sounds eerily similar to that of Eleanor Bumpers in 1983. Bumpers was a 66-year-old Bronx resident who had allegedly made hostile threats against city housing authority workers. Police were called, and later stated that Bumpers came at them with a knife. She was shot twice with a shotgun. Evidence presented to a grand jury stated that the first shot hit Bumpers in the hand in which she held the knife but she continued “forward movement.” The officer who fired the fatal shots, Stephen Sullivan, was indicted for manslaughter, a charge which was later dropped by a judge.
Both Bumpers and Danner were black, and both Sullivan and Barry are white.