Two days after a Philadelphia cop was shot by a man who said he had pledged loyalty to the Islamic State, the city’s police and the FBI are investigating a tip that the man was part of a group with radical beliefs that might still pose a threat.
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Authorities say Archer, 30, of Yeadon, fired at least 13 shots toward the officer as he patrolled his usual west Philadelphia beat shortly before midnight Thursday.
Police said in a statement on Facebook on Sunday that an officer was stopped on the street on Saturday night by a citizen who began talking about Archer and the shooting that seriously wounded Hartnett.
“Right away he didn’t have anything to say, but then he stated he pledges his allegiance to Islamic State, he follows Allah and that’s the reason he was called upon to do this”, authorities said in a press conference.
Dramatic images from the attack showed a gunman, dressed in a long white robe, approaching Officer Hartnett’s patrol auto and getting close enough to shoot at point-blank range through the window. “The FBI is also assessing recent trips Archer made to the Middle East, including a pilgrimage in 2011 to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, known as a Hajj, required of all devout Muslims” and a 10-month stay in Egypt in 2012. Responding officers captured the suspect and recovered a gun that had been reported stolen from a police officer in 2013.
Police say the incident at Penn Presbyterian was not related to Hartnett’s shooting. Police said there was no indication anyone else was involved.
Archer’s mother, Valerie Holliday, told The Philadelphia Inquirer he had been hearing voices and felt targeted by police. Jacob Bender, the executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an advocacy group, said he contacted about five inner-city mosques and found no one who knew of Archer. “We asked him to get medical help”, she said.
Hartnett, 33, and a U.S. Coast Guard veteran, is in stable condition in the hospital with bullet wounds to his left arm and will have to undergo numerous surgical procedures.
Police said Archer has a criminal record, but that it was unclear whether he acted alone or as part of a wider conspiracy. The officer jumped out of his cruiser to give chase, shooting Archer in the buttocks.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said after the shooting that Archer’s actions did not reflect on his religion. A man and a woman who were praying inside yesterday afternoon said Masjid Al Jamia does not teach or condone radical Islamic activity.
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“His will to live undoubtedly saved his life, and we are ever so thankful to God that he is here today because this could easily have been a police funeral”, Commissioner Ross said. The shooter will have to carry a pillow for awhile to sit down when he, as the London newspapers famously put it in accounts of such cases, “assists police in their investigation”.
