It is with deep sadness that I join our City as we mourn the great loss of New York Police Department Officer Randolph Holder who was tragically shot while on duty in our beloved community of East Harlem.
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Tyrone Howard, the man accused of shooting Officer Randolph Holder in the head earlier this week, was placed into the diversion system by a judge a year ago. Prosecutors say the case against Howard will be presented to a grand jury beginning Friday. Police report finding the clip for the gun with 13 live rounds in it, a spent round and a folding knife they believe may have been tossed by Howard.
Howard was a drug addict and low-level drug offender. Howard has since been charged with first-degree murder in the officer’s death.
It’s a sobering statistic: Every 60 hours, a police officer is killed in America.
But after reviewing his record and reading a social worker’s report detailing Howard’s troubled home life and longtime addiction, McLaughlin agreed to refer his case for evaluation for drug court, where another judge OK’d Howard for the program.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s office recommended Howard serve seven years on that charge. Though he has no violent felony convictions, one of those arrests was related to a shootout in 2009 in which an 11-year-old boy and an elderly man were injured, though Howard was not convicted.
“It was you who gave me a chance”, one woman told Nunez, adding that she might be dead if not for court-ordered treatment. The Guyana native, 33, was the son and grandson of police officers and worked in a division that polices public housing developments.
McLaughlin said he never saw a record indicating a shooting arrest.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said Howard is among the thousands of people responsible for a disproportionate amount of violence citywide. Holder was shot in the head Tuesday evening in East Harlem, allegedly by a gunman he was chasing.
Mr. Howard’s first arrest, when he was 14 years old, was for a robbery at gunpoint reported at 402 E. 102nd St., a law-enforcement official said.
“Nobody’s here saying anything bad about cops – we’re here talking about killer cops, holding killer cops responsible”, said Tawanda Jones, another protester.
At Sharpton’s side at the police building on East 123rd Street Saturday was Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, the Staten Islander whose death by police during an arrest for illegal cigarette peddling catalyzed months of protests, many led by Sharpton.
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We should all be willing to go out of our way to thank our police officers for putting their lives on the line every day to protect us.
