Police fire 18 times to bring down suspect who sliced officer with meat cleaver

Police fired 18 bullets at a suspect armed with a meat cleaver in a crowded shopping street after he sliced open an off-duty detective’s jaw. The officers had chased Akram Joudeh when they caught him trying to prise a parking clamp from the wheel of a car in which he was living in New York. They failed to bring hm down with Tasers before he climbed on to the front of a police car and hacked the face of the off-duty officer who went to tackle him. At that point, the police opened fire 18 times, hitting him at least twice and leaving the 32-year-old critically injured in hospital.

Keep in mind that he had just attacked an off-duty officer who has a 6-inch gash on his face and he has a 11-inch cleaver.

New York police department chief James O'Neill explains why his men fired 18 times

Joudeh, who has been arrested more than a dozen times in recent years, mostly for minor crimes, was first spotted close to Penn Station in Manhattan. As he fled, pursued by a growing band of police officers, he pulled the cleaver from his waistband. The chase ended in a street about a block from Macy’s department store and Madison Square Garden. Bystander Jonathan Schneier said when he left work to get coffee he saw a man holding a large knife, surrounded by officers yelling at him to drop the weapon. “I give credit to the police officers. They gave him many opportunities.

We have a character running down the street, waving a cleaver. I want to commend them on their bravery

New York police commissioner William Bratton, who retires today