NYPD Says Innocent, Unarmed People Shot By Cops Are ‘Walking Into Police Bullets’

New York Police Department official Zachary Tumin has been placed in charge of the NYPD’s social media p̶r̶e̶s̶e̶n̶c̶e̶ propaganda. But the Deputy Commissioner doesn’t seem to be helping things for the infamously militarized police department that former Mayor Bloomberg rightly termed a “private army.”

Recently, Tumin gave the world a glimpse into the warped psyche of police brutality. He tweeted that innocent people shot by cops have “gone off their meds” and are “walking into police bullets.”

This is a real problem, evrywhre. via @ThisIsFusion People off their meds r losing it &wlking into police bullets.http://t.co/VIEK72R75H

— Zach Tumin (@ZachTumin) March 2, 2015

While there is certainly a real and tragic phenomenon as “suicide-by-cop,” Tumin suggested that officers innocently fire their weapons in one direction and those hit are simply “deranged” people who walk into the line of fire.

Was Tumin talking about people “walking into bullets” like the nine bystanders shot by NYPD “soldiers” outside of the Empire State Building back in 2012? Perhaps he meant people “walking into bullets” like the bystanders shot when the NYPD opened fire on a crowded Manhattan street near Times Square in 2013 and shot a woman in the knee and another in the buttocks. These people were innocent, unarmed, and victims of trigger-happy police who had been called to deescalate a situation. Far from doing what they were called to do, they escalated things and shot many more people than who otherwise would have been shot.

Just to clarify, no, Tumin’s comments were not in any way related to the “suicide-by-cop” phenomenon, which accounts for very few police shootings, and even fewer instances of suicide. Instead, he was responding to an article about cops who escalate situations with people they were called to help, like Tanisha Anderson, who Cleveland, Ohio cops restrained face down, and then slammed on the concrete – killing her in front of her family – even though the police had been called to help deescalate the situation.

Unfortunately, Tumin has made his Twitter account private, so that only people he approves as followers can read his tweets from here on out. That’s why we screen captured his horrific commentary, and saved the page… just in case he tries to deny that these were his words.