COP SHOULD HAVE BETTER AIM

NEXT TIME PUT THE SHOT IN HIS RIGHT VENTRICAL INSTEAD OF HIS ARM.

COP SAVES PARTNER AFTER THROAT SLASHING

By ED ROBINSON, LARRY CELONA and JOE McGURK
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Email Archives
Print Reprint



March 23, 2005 -- A Queens narcotics cop was slashed across the throat by a man he was trying to arrest yesterday — but his life was saved when his partner shot the man in the arm, police said.
"We were one inch away from tragedy," said Mayor Bloomberg, who visited the injured cop at Jamaica Hospital last night.

The officer, whose name was withheld, was in stable condition.

Police said the violence began just before 8 p.m. when a Hollis man called 911 to report another man had threatened to shoot him. A description of the suspect went out over police radios.

Two narcotics cops in the area responded and spotted the man a block away.

When the officers got out of their squad car, the man grabbed one of them, a five-year veteran, and slashed him with a carpet knife, just missing his carotid artery, police said.

"It was an eight-inch gash, starting by the [left] ear," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said. "It ran all the way to the collarbone. Doctors said he was very lucky."



The officer's partner, an 11-year police veteran, then shot the knifeman once in the arm.

The man, identified as Radcliffe Meeks, 33, was in stable condition at Mary Immaculate Hospital. Meeks has been arrested twice before for assaulting police officers, cops said. The injured cop was visited by his parents and sister.

"I expressed to them the city's appreciation for everything their son and brother does," Bloomberg said.

Of the officer who saved her partner with one shot, the mayor said: "She used necessary force."






Back to: Regional News | National News | World News