NYPD Threats: Man Says Dead Cops Should Have Been White
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New York Police Department(NEW YORK) — New details have emerged about one of the threats that was made against New York police officers in the wake of the fatal shooting that left two cops dead in New York last weekend.
Elvin Payamps, 38, was arrested Wednesday after someone overheard him making threats on a cellphone, saying that he wanted to kill an officer before Christmas, authorities said.
The witness heard Payamps make those statements at 1:38 p.m. Cops tracked down Payamps about an hour later, authorities said.
The witness told police that he heard Payamps say, “The cop should have been white that was killed. I always have a gun on me.”
The victims Payamps is believed to have referred to were Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, the Hispanic and Asian officers, respectively, who were fatally shot in an ambush of their patrol vehicle on Saturday afternoon in Brooklyn by a man who shot himself minutes later on a subway platform.
The police officer who found Payamps an hour after the threat noticed him in a blue BMW in Queens with windows that were tinted much darker than the legal limit allows, authorities said.
Upon questioning, the officer determined that Payamps had marijuana in his car, police said, and a later search of his home found a set of brass knuckles, two guns and two body vests.
Payamps later admitted to the officer that he did say that if last weekend’s attacker “wanted to send a message” that he “should have killed two white cops instead” of minorities, according to the criminal complaint. Payamps has been charged with gun possession.
This is one of at least six arrests that have been made over the past week in connection to threats made against police officers in the wake of the Dec. 20 attack.
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