He Aimed Right At The Cop

One PCP-addled man allegedly pointed his gun right at one of the cops approaching him. Another man allegedly boasted that he planned to shoot cops. Specific cops.

The police arrested both men, in separate incidents, and seized a powerful weapon in a third arrest, all in the past week.

“Wet” & Wild

First the alleged gun-pointing.

That incident occurred Election Night, less than an hour after polls closed, near Lincoln Bassett School in Newhallville.

The incident had no apparent connection to the election. Rather it had a connection to ​“wet” — PCP-laced marijuana.

“Wet” makes people act crazy. A 20-year-old man in the neighborhood had started smoking wet in recent weeks, his girlfriend told police.

At 8:49 p.m. two members of the city’s shooting task force—New Haven Officer Juan Ingles and Special Agent Michael Oppenheim of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms — heard a call on the radio about the man standing and waving a gun in the intersection of Bassett and Shepard streets.

They were nearby working a ​“crime suppression detail” in the neighborhood. They headed to the scene. Upon arrival, Ingles later wrote in a police report, the pair ​“identified ourselves as police, un-holstered our department issued weapons and pointed them at [the man] as we ordered him to drop the gun. [The man] stood in the road and would not drop the gun as he waved it over his head and began yelling …

“We kept yelling … that we were ​‘the police’ and kept ordering him to drop the gun and to get on his knees.”

At that point, according to Ingles, the man did lower the gun — ​“and pointed it in our direction.”

Fearing for the officers’ lives, Oppenheim fired a bullet at the man. It missed him. The man then ​“pointed the gun at the floor” as Ingles switched to his Taser, which he fired at the man, Ingles reported.

“I observed the prongs hit [his] body but did not have any effect on him. [He] did not fall to floor, did not scream or appear to be in pain.”

So Ingles charged the man, Tased him this time in the neck, while he and Oppenheim wrestled the man ​“to the ground. [He] kept fighting while on the ground and would not let go of the gun. I drive-stun [him] again in the upper right side of this back and yanked the gun off his hand.”

Officers handcuffed and arrested him on charges of carrying a dangerous weapon, interfering with police, reckless endangerment, breach of peace, threatening, and attempted assault on a public safety officer.

Ingles told the man ​“he was under arrest and was going to the hospital for treatment,” Ingles wrote. The suspect ​“looked at me and uttered, ​‘Whatever, bitch.’”

The gun turned out to be a Daily CO2 pistol .177 caliber pellet gun.

“Gigantic” Glock Grabbed

Also in Newhallville, the task force had picked up word that a man was boasting about how he was going to shoot the police. He allegedly cited names of task force members and had a .40-caliber Glock reserved for the job.

Last Thursday evening officers saw the man get into a car in the area of Read Street. They stopped the car for alleged motor vehicle violations. They allegedly found drugs on the man and arrested him on narcotics charges.

Then they canvassed the area. In a backyard they found a .40 caliber Glock inside an unoccupied car. The gun, which usually holds nine bullets, had a ​“gigantic” magazine with 30 rounds in it, police said.

“Desert Eagle” Grounded

The third incident occurred in the Hill around 10:15 p.m. Saturday. It began when cops saw the driver of spotted a silver colored Buick with New York plates run a stop sign at Adeline Street. The cops put on their siren. The driver sped off. The cops pursued.

Here’s what happened next, according to police spokesman Officer David Hartman:

At King Place the driver hit the brakes. He and a passenger hopped out of the car, ignored ​“orders to show their hands,” then ​“ran up a driveway.” The passenger’s ​“right hand was holding something in his waistband.”

The men led a group of officers on a chase over fences, with one of the men tossing away a gun along the way. Officer Kyle Malloy caught up with him and ​“tackled him in a cement slab mounted air conditioning unit. The impact was such to knock it from its foundation. The brief struggle that followed was won by Officer Malloy.”

The driver was caught too. The two men, who are 32 and 36 years old, face drug (as in crack, meth, and marijuana) charges, gun charges, trespassing and interfering charges, even a forgery and criminal impersonation charge.

The recovered gun was a big one, according to Hartman: ​“an Israeli-made ​‘Desert Eagle’ .50 caliber handgun. It was loaded and chambered with the hammer locked back and the safety off.”