On the evening of June 4, while the Buffalo police were rerouting and diverting the BlackLivesMatter protesters at Niagara Square in NY around 8 pm curfew, two officers thrust an elderly 75-year old man, Martin Gugino, who fell on the sidewalk and injured his head.
The man was seen lying in the pool of his blood when one officer knelt down and tried to check his pulse. The incident has outraged the public and individuals are taking it to social media to record their protests and disgust over the matter.
Both officers, who were directly involved with this heinous crime, are suspended on unpaid leave with an investigation pending on their part. Andrew Cuomo, the New York governor, has expressed his emotions in Friday’s daily briefing asking why this aggressive act was necessary and where was the threat in that old man?
Cuomo further called it ‘fundamentally offensive and frightening’ and he shared his disappointment in the cops as he said ‘how did we get to this point?’. The governor called the officers’ actions as totally unjustified and disgraceful.
On the same day, Friday, the entire team of Buffalo police department’s emergency response unit, which comprises 57 officers, gave their resignation both in support of their two suspended officers and to demonstrate their disgust on how the admin dealt with this matter.
According to their perspective, the two officers who shoved down the old man were only doing their jobs as per the commands so they should not have been suspended.point 249 |
Though these 57 cops are still going to be actively working for the Buffalo Department of Police and be paid as they were before but they will no longer serve the emergency response unit.point 154 | point 154 | 1
The county’s executive Mark Poloncarz has wished Gugino a speedy recovery and informed the public that he is all alert and conscious in the hospital. However, he called the incident a dark stain on the entire city.