The death of a new New York scooter rider who died during a “buy-and-bust” police operation in the Bronx has been upgraded to a homicide, the city medical examiner has said.
The examiner ruled Eric Duprey’s death a homicide, caused by blunt force trauma to his head.
Duprey, 30, died on Wednesday after a New York police department sergeant threw a picnic cooler at him as he was riding off, causing him to lose control of his scooter and smash into a tree and a parked car.
He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a news release from the New York attorney general’s office.
“On the evening of August 23, in the vicinity of 2505 Aqueduct Avenue, an NYPD officer threw a picnic cooler at Mr Duprey, who was riding a motorbike,” the release stated. “The cooler hit Mr Duprey and caused him to fall on the ground.”
In a statement, the NYPD said Duprey had been attempting to flee from police and committed to “a full, thorough, and transparent investigation of this incident to determine the facts”.
Law enforcement officials have said Duprey had been trying to sell narcotics to a group of plain-clothed narcotics enforcement officers. As Duprey tried to flee on a motorbike down the sidewalk, an officer identified as narcotics Sgt Erik Duran flung the cooler at him. Duran has been suspended without pay.
“We don’t train officers to pick up something and throw it at a suspect,” an NYPD official told the New York Daily News, adding that the officer’s use of force was outside department guidelines.
A witness also told the Daily News that Duprey was moving north on the bike with the police in pursuit.
“Then he took a U-turn and was riding on the sidewalk … The cop then took my cooler, which was filled with soda cans, water bottles, and hit him,” the witness said.
A lawyer for Duprey’s family, Jonathan Roberts, called it “tragic” that “yet again a poorly-trained NYPD officer has taken the life of another young man so unnecessarily”. He added that the family planned to seek justice.
Buy-and-bust operations have in the past been criticized as unfairly targeting minority communities. They typically involved an undercover officer approaching a street dealer or guide. Once a buy is complete, other officers pick up the suspect.
According to the criminal defense attorney Oded Oren in 2020, the NYPD makes approximately 8,000 buy-and-bust arrests a year.
“In an unsurprising pattern for the NYPD, these operations target people of color. NYPD data reveals that between 2015-2019, 87% of people arrested in these operations were Black or Latino, a total of 38,290 arrests, Oren wrote in the Gotham Gazette.
“Often these operations intentionally target people with substance use issues, one of the most vulnerable groups of individuals in our city,” Oren added.
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