- Police Brutality Watch

Police fatally shot a homeless man who was attacking a woman with a four-foot aluminum light fixture in Brooklyn early Monday. Jose Feliciano, 44, was shot once in the chest by a police officer around 6 a.m. in front of 599 Sutter Ave. as he approached the officer swinging the 4 x 1 aluminum light fixture. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Brookdale Hospital Center. While police officials, speaking off the record, said the shooting appears justifiable, City Councilman Charles Barron, whose district includes the area, questioned why the officers didn't try to restrain the man with less deadly police equipment. The chain of events that led to the fatal shooting unfurled in a matter of seconds. Doris Lopez, 34, emerged from her Sutter Avenue apartment headed to the Lucky 1 Deli Grocery across the street for coffee and felt something brush against her hair, she said. "When I turned around Jose was swinging at me," she said. Monday, as Feliciano continued to swing the light fixture, Lopez tried to calm him while running home. Lopez spotted a police car driving down the street and screamed for help."They kept telling him to put the thing down but he kept swinging at him," Lopez said. She said the two officers initially didn't have their guns drawn but eventually one of them unholstered his weapon and fired once at Feliciano. "Let's say everything happened the way the police say it happened," the city councilman said. "They've got to find another way to disarm somebody. If you go through all that training at the academy and two men with batons can't disarm a man holding a metal object then they shouldn't be patrolling these streets. We're not animals out here. They've got to respect our lives. This is ridiculous." [more]