Advocates demand NYPD fire officers involved in fatal shooting of elderly Brooklyn man armed with pistol

The two cops who fatally shot a 78-year-old Brooklyn man inside his own home should be drummed out of the department, an anti-police brutality group said Saturday.

“If people are not safe from the police in their own homes, then where are they safe?” members of the New York Community Action Project asked on Facebook as they announced an upcoming rally at Herbert Von King Park in Bedford Stuyvesant, which is about a mile from where two NYPD officers fatally shot the senior while responding to a report of a crime in progress.

“We demand that the NYPD release the names of these killer cops and fire them!” NYCAP members demanded.

The advocates spoke as the events surrounding the death of Caesar Robinson remained under investigation. State Attorney General Tish James’ office has opened a probe into the deadly encounter, as required by state law.

An NYPD official on Friday described the officers as “very upset” and “rattled” over unexpectedly ending up in a life-and-death situation. Neither officer had been involved in a shooting before, said NYPD sources.

The trouble began about 1 p.m. Thursday when a friend of Robinson called 911, claiming someone was climbing through a window to enter Robinson’s apartment, police said.

When cops arrived at the second-floor apartment on Lewis Ave. between Hancock Ave. and Jefferson Ave., Robinson stepped outside with a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver in his left hand, police said.

The officers dove for cover and ordered Robinson to drop his weapon — but when the older man raised his gun chest high, both cops fatally shot him, police said.

The two cops were less than four feet from Robinson when they opened fire.

One of the officers, who has been with the department for a decade fired four times, police sources with knowledge of the case said. The other cop, a nine year veteran of the NYPD, fired three times.

No burglar was found in the building, cops said.

NYPD investigators are trying to determine what sparked the confrontation and were mulling over the possibility that Robinson, for an unexplained reason, wanted to commit “suicide by cop,” the source said.

“What would cause somebody to go to the door and point a gun at officers?” the source asked.

A former girlfriend of the man who alerted the police about the crime in progress said he was released from prison in February, but would never do anything to hurt a close friend like Robinson.

Neighbors said Robinson, who owned his gun illegally but had no prior interactions with the NYPD, was struggling with health issues.

“The NYPD alleges that (Robinson) pointed a firearm at the officers, but this flimsy excuse is no justification for yet another murder of a man in his own home at the hands of the NYPD,” NYCAP members said in their post. They called the shooting “horrific and completely unjustified.”

NYCAP members noted that Robinson’s death came less than a month after cops shot and critically wounded Raul de la Cruz, who was having a mental health episode at his father’s home.

On March 26, de la Cruz approached cops with a knife, which he refused to drop. When he got too close, the cops fired several shots, including two that hit de la Cruz in the chest. He was also shot in his leg.

His family said they called 311 instead of 911 so cops wouldn’t show up, but cops showed up anyway. Relatives said the situation would never have escalated so quickly if dispatchers had sent the right personnel to deal with the situation.

Robinson died in one of three police shootings on Thursday. The other incidents involved someone who stabbed a security guard at a Queens store and a man threatening people at a Bronx train station with a B.B. gun.

The rally is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday beginning at the Marcy and Green Aves. side of the park, advocates said.