The officer was the second to be shot in New York in 36 hours, offering a challenge to Mayor Eric Adams as he seeks to deliver on the public safety message that was central to his campaign.
A New York City police detective was shot in the leg when a man fired through a door as the police searched a Staten Island home for drugs early Thursday, officials said.
The shooting occurred at around 6 a.m. as narcotics officers executed a search warrant at the home in the New Springville neighborhood, the police said.
After the officers walked up a stairwell at the address, on Rockne Street near Nome Avenue, a man fired “numerous shots” at them from another room, Keechant Sewell, the police commissioner said at a news conference on Thursday. The police returned fire and shot him, officials said.
The man and the detective, a 10-year veteran of the department, were both in stable condition, the police said.
“In less than three weeks, we’ve been in East Harlem, the Bronx and Staten Island,” Commissioner Sewell said, in reference to the locations of other recent shootings. She continued to emphasize that she views illegal guns as the core problem fueling violence.
The officer was the second to be shot in 36 hours, with the shootings coming as Mayor Eric Adams, early in his administration, seeks to deliver on the public safety message that was central to his campaign.
Since taking office on Jan. 1, Mr. Adams has traveled to the scenes of several violent episodes that together have illustrated the challenges he faces after making policing and safety focal points of his platform.
He was traveling to Washington, D.C., for a national conference of mayors on Thursday, but the first deputy mayor, Lorraine Grillo, spoke at the news conference in his place.
Ms. Grillo said that she had met with the detective and his family at the hospital on Thursday and offered them support. She added that Mr. Adams was monitoring the situation.
“We are in constant contact,” Ms. Grillo said.
The police identified the gunman as Nelson Pizarro, 39, who they said had seven prior arrests in New York on charges including criminal possession of a controlled substance.
Police officials said Mr. Pizarro had shot through the door of a bedroom on the second floor of the Staten Island home they were searching. The police had an arrest warrant for another man at the address.
Mr. Pizarro was taken into custody along with two women and the man who was the subject of the arrest warrant, the police said. It was unclear Thursday morning why the women were arrested, and whether Mr. Pizarro had retained a lawyer.
Hours earlier, an 11-month-old girl in the Bronx was hit by a stray bullet while in a parked car with her mother — a shooting that Mr. Adams argued needed to serve as a “wake-up call” for the city.
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The baby was described as critical but stable afterward, and the police did not have an update on her condition on Thursday morning.
The shooting was the latest shocking act of violence in recent days that further focused attention on public safety. On Jan. 9, a 19-year-old woman was shot and killed by a man who the police said was robbing a Burger King. And last weekend, a 40-year-old woman was killed after a mentally ill man shoved her into the path of a subway train in Times Square. (The police said there was no indication that the woman, who was Asian American, had been targeted because of her race or ethnicity.)
Gun violence, which had reached historic lows in New York, spiked in the city during the pandemic, taking a major toll on some city neighborhoods. The totals have remained above their prior levels.
The officer who was shot on Thursday was the third to be injured in gunfire this month. On Tuesday, officials said that a single bullet fired by a teenager hit a police officer and the boy as they scuffled in the Bronx. The two were both in stable condition afterward, and the officer left the hospital early Wednesday.
Early on New Year’s Day, an off-duty officer was hospitalized after he was struck in the head by a bullet as he slept in his car outside an East Harlem station house between shifts, the police said.
