Cops draw fire over shooting incidents

One day after three bystanders caught bullets when police shot at a gun-blasting New Year's Eve reveler, angry neighbors criticized officers for firing at an occupied structure and arresting the wrong man.

"Why do we have to ring in the New Year like that, you know?" asked Jennifer Baker, a witness to the incident in East Germantown.

"The cops were yelling at us to get back inside, and the whole time we were yelling that there were kids in the house. But they emptied their whole clip," Baker said.

Despite the criticism, police officials defended the officers involved, saying an internal investigation was under way.

"If you're met with deadly force or you feel your life or the lives of others are in danger, you're authorized to use deadly force in return," said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore, explaining police procedure. "But it's a split-second decision an officer has to make, and it's a little hard to critique a call that's made in a matter of seconds."

Vanore added that police supervisors "have questions about the incident, too," and have placed the involved officers on desk duty - routine in police-involved shootings - pending the investigation's outcome. If any wrongdoing is determined, the officers would face inquiries that could result in discipline, Vanore added.

The incident was the first of two confrontations in the first few minutes of 2008 that prompted police to fire on men who allegedly pointed handguns at them as the revelers celebrated the New Year by blasting bullets into the air.

At 12:01 a.m., two men and a 9-year-old boy were hit by stray bullets after police fired at a man who they said pointed his gun at them on Boyer Street near Locust Avenue.

The victims were celebrating the New Year inside a home, which was in the officers' line of fire. A 33-year-old man, shot in the face, remains in critical condition at Albert Einstein Medical Center, while a 32-year-old man shot in the arm and abdomen was in stable condition there. The boy had a minor graze wound to the back and is recovering at home.

Police initially mistakenly charged a Northeast Philadelphia man who was at the party and who was wearing clothing matching the real suspect's, Vanore said yesterday.

The district attorney's office is expected to drop charges against Steven Walker, 38, after police later identified Dontate Mitchell, 21, of Price Street near Germantown Avenue, as the correct suspect, Vanore said.

Walker's mother, Derotha, is furious that police arrested her son. She wants his name cleared and an apology from the police.

"It was awful. I'm looking at one of the cops who is throwing my son down on the floor and telling me to get back. My son was in the basement the whole night playing pool," Walker said.

"He only came upstairs because he heard all the stomping," she added.

Mitchell, who was wounded in the arm, has been charged with aggravated assault and weapons offenses, Vanore added.

Mitchell works as a part-time mailer for Philadelphia Media Holdings, which owns the Inquirer and Daily News.

The second incident of the night came just 10 minutes later, when two SWAT officers heard bullets flying over Butler Street near Darien in North Philadelphia. The officers saw three men reloading their guns and ordered them to stop. The men instead fled, and police said one pointed his gun at police. The officers fired at him, hitting him in the ankle. Two suspects were arrested in that case, and 80 spent cartridges were found at the scene.

Philadelphia officials have given the go-ahead for "shot-spotter" technology to be installed in the city's problem neighborhoods to alert police and pinpoint exact locations whenever gunfire erupts.

Vanore wasn't sure yesterday when that technology would be in place. *