On Tuesday afternoon, NYPD Detective Kendo Kinsey punched 19-year-old Tamani Crum in the face, causing her to fall to the ground. The attack was captured on video, and occurred in Harlem, as NYPD officers were attempting to arrest a 22-year-old man suspected in an attempted murder. Crum approached the officers and, from the video, appears to get pushed by Kinsey, before then pushing him back; Kinsey then decked her. Crum and another woman on the scene were arrested, according to news reports.
Kinsey has a history of complaints made against him, including two substantiated complaints, which can be viewed via the CCRB’s publicly available database. (ProPublica’s database has more details.) According to the Daily News, Kinsey also “lost 25 days of vacation after his service weapon was left inside the glove compartment of his car and stolen in 2014.”
The NYPD is closing ranks around Kinsey, whom the Daily News reports is now “under internal review”—we all know what that means! It’s a little-appreciated fact that sometimes the rules entitle you to deliver a knock-out punch to the face of a girl who weighs a buck ten, one anonymous NYPD source helpfully explained: “A lot of people see cops struggling and wrestling with people. But they have to understand that punching someone is a justifiable action, too.” Meanwhile, the Detectives’ Endowment Association has Kinsey’s back, announcing in a statement that they are exploring a civil suit on behalf of Kinsey against the 19-year-old he punched in the face.
Also coming to Kinsey’s defense is our ex-cop mayor. Here’s what Adams had to say, via the Daily News:
Mayor Adams, an ex-NYPD officer, encouraged New Yorkers to wait for an investigation before jumping to conclusions about what happened, noting the officers were in the “high stressful environment” of arresting an armed suspect, and commended them for getting a gun off the streets.
“It’s a lot of madness going on. This is not just something that is a theatrical performance. This is real danger. This person was wanted for murder,” said Adams, misstating the charge. “This person had a loaded gun.”
Here’s what else we’re reading today:
- Times Square is now a gun free zone, after the state legislature passed a law declaring Times Square a “sensitive area,” a response to the Supreme Court ruling that New York’s strict permitting law for carrying guns was unconstitutional. But where is Times Square, which is apparently now Times Two Rectangles Stacked on Top of One Another? And how is this whole thing going to work, given it’s already difficult to get anyone to pay attention to any one particular piece of signage in those blocks, and the nearby diamond merchants have a preexisting enthusiasm for firearms?
- Michael Nieves, the 40-year-old man held at Rikers Island who slit his own throat while correction officers allegedly watched, waiting at least 10 minutes to do anything, has died. Nieves is the thirteenth person to die while in City custody this year.
- Oklahoma’s top education official is still mad at Summer Boismier, the high school English teacher who shared a link to the Brooklyn Public Library’s “Books UnBanned” resources with her students. And now, he wants the state to strip her of her teaching license.
- Some bad news re: tunnels.
- Speed cameras are working:
- Brooklyn Democrats can have control of their party when they pry it from their executive leadership’s cold dead hands.
- No.
- Finally, some clarity on whether or not you need to show your ID to buy a canister of whipped cream.
- Goodbye to the Wing. What was the Wing? Never heard of it, we don’t have those in my twee English hamlet.
