New York City Cops Chasing A Suspect Did Something You Only See In Movies
The incident began when two plainclothes police officers arrested Bryan McMenamin in Queens Monday night, June 16 for allegedly selling drugs. The officers were transporting McMenamin in an unmarked police vehicle when they stopped at another Queens location and got out, leaving McMenamin handcuffed in the backseat.
At that point, the suspect somehow managed to climb into the front seat and allegedly sped away.
One of the police officers was injured when he was dragged by the fleeing vehicle. Then the other officer decided to take extreme measures, straight out of an action movie.
A woman in a nearby Hyundai Sonata saw the cop run toward her, wielding his gun and police radio in each hand. Since the officer was wearing plain clothes rather than a police uniform, the woman initially thought he was attempting to steal her car. But when she saw his badge, she willingly gave up the vehicle.
"She didn't want to give up the car until he said 'I'm an officer,'" the woman's father Miguel Figueroa told WABC-TV New York. "Then she got out, and he got into the car ... It's like something you hear on TV. I've never heard of that before, they commandeer a car to chase someone, a perp."
After a couple of minutes, the officer returned the car with slight damage and apologized, reported WABC-TV New York. McMenamin had still not been found.
The NYPD did not immediately respond to our request for comment Wednesday morning.
The unmarked police vehicle was found abandoned in Queens. Police finally apprehended McMenamin Tuesday afternoon in Lower Manhattan, where he was discovered no longer wearing his handcuffs, reported the New York Times.
Although cops do it all the time in movies, police rarely, if ever, commandeer civilian vehicles in real life. "I have been around for 23 years and I have never heard where we have had to commandeer a car," Los Angeles Police Department spokesman Sgt. Lee Sands told the Los Angeles Times in 2007.