NY mayor: Police shooting of mentally ill woman unacceptable

NEW YORK (AP) — The mayor today castigated a police sergeant for killing a mentally ill, 66-year-old woman in her home, saying her death was "tragic" and "unacceptable" and her shooting violated department policy.

"Deborah Danner should be alive right now, period," Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a news conference. "If the protocols had been followed, she would be alive. It's as simple as that."

Officers were responding to a 911 call about an emotionally disturbed person about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday when they encountered Danner in her seventh-floor apartment in the Bronx, police said.

Police had been called to Danner's home several times before to take her to the hospital during psychiatric episodes, the mayor said. Each of those times, she was taken away safely.

This time, something went wrong, the mayor said.

Sgt. Hugh Barry, an eight-year veteran of the force, persuaded Danner to drop a pair of scissors she had been holding, but when she picked up a baseball bat and tried to strike him, he fired two shots that hit her torso.

Danner is black. Barry is white.

Police Commissioner James O'Neill told reporters that his department "failed."

"That's not how it's supposed to go," O'Neill said. "It's not how we train; our first obligation is to preserve life, not to take a life when it can be avoided."