NYPD Officer David Afanador was arrested over the weekend for carrying out an armed assault on the Atlantic Ocean when he fired shots at the body of water from the shore at Ocean Beach Park. He was charged with criminal possession of a weapon and unlawful possession of alcohol due to alcohol being banned in the park. He faces no charges for recklessly endangering the lives of an untold number of fish, marine mammals, and microbial life. That is likely because of a lack of legislation protecting the rights of marine life and an inability to know how many living things were endangered by Afanador due to a lack of witnesses capable of knowing exactly what was submerged beneath the surface. We also believe that charges should be brought for recklessly endangering people if New York, like other states, does not require a known victim to have been endangered.
We are not aware of any state that has not made it is a crime to recklessly endanger other persons. Often, reckless endangerment statutes do not require a named victim. That was the in Oregon both times that this author has been convicted or reckless endangerment. The first involved setting off Piccolo Pete Bombs on a deserted street before the 4th of July in 2007 and the second involved drunkenly throwing a pint glass behind myself hard enough to break a TV I did not realize was there in 2010. In both cases the controlling case law involved a man firing a gun in public. That man was not accused of coming anywhere close to hitting any known person, but the appeals courts in Oregon ruled that all the government must show was that had a person been in his line of fire that there was a substantial risk of injuring that person. In my first case, the government charged me with unlawful possession of a destructive device and reckless endangerment before offering me 80 hours of community service if I pled to the reckless endangerment charge. My lawyer though he could easily beat the endangerment charge due to the low likelihood of Piccolo Pete Bombs hurting a bystander at all, but he also felt that if he could not suppress the warrantless search of my place or a jury believed a snitch that claimed to have seen me with them that the risk of being convicted of a felony for making the homemade fireworks was high enough and the future legal fees of winning significant enough that pleading to a misdemeanor in exchange for community service was the right move. I took the 2010 case to trial because I had not gone to court and was not re-arrested until 2012. By then I was facing a slew of unrelated charges in federal court for a threatening email I sent to a deranged stalker that had endangered members of my immediate family, but because I would not remove an allegation posted by someone else on a website of mine accusing her of having a STD they decided to treat her as a victim for the purpose of shutting down the website. The feds were working with local prosecutor Kevin Demer (https://copblaster.com/hashtag/kevin-demer/) to lock me up as long as possible, so Demer refused to consider a plea in that case and instead took me to trial where he sought the statutory maximum of 1 year. Oddly enough, I was acquitted of the most serious and relevant charge in that case because Demer failed to provide the court with proof that the TV was worth more than $500, so I could not be convicted of 2nd degree criminal mischief, and Oregon law required intent to damage property to convict on a mischief III charge. I was however convicted of reckless endangerment just because had someone been between myself and the TV that they would have likely been injured if struck by the pint glass. I was sentenced to 120 days in jail just for breaking a TV by accident, but part of the Judge Angel Lopez's (https://copblaster.com/hashtag/angel-lopez) motive was due to lies told by two witnesses that worked at the bar and were close friends. Those lies included an accusation that I had thrown the glass directly at one of them (https://copblaster.com/blast/92/dallas-liddell-committed-perjury-in-oregon-criminal-trial), but one of them was clearly motivated by personal reasons having been exposed for lying to the police on another site of mine (https://postalmostanything.com/810/dallas-liddell-found-guilty-of-false-police-report). Despite their stories changing, that false accusation not appearing in the original police reports, and conflicting statements from a co-worker of theirs, Judge Lopez stated he believed the lies and sentenced me to 120 days saying that his reason for acquitting me of the mischief charges was that he thought my intent was to harm people instead of property, and I was lucky to have only been charged with mischief instead of Attempted Assault II. By obtaining that sentence my criminal history level under the United States Sentencing Guidelines (USSG) increased by two levels for having a prior sentence of more than 60 days. If it were not for that I would not have likely received a 24 month sentence for making threatening communication in federal court. The Oregon law is clearly unjust because it results in people being convicted of endangerment without endangering anyone, so hopefully New York has more sense, but they probably don't. If New York has a reckless endangerment law like Oregon and like Oregon that law does not require any known person to actually be endangered, then Officer Afanador is clearly guilty and should be charged because for all he knew there could have been a scuba diver directly under the surface where his bullet hit.
Officer Afanador was first featured on Cop Blaster last year when he was arrested for using unnecessary and excessive force against a black man by putting him in a chokehold on a boardwalk in Rockaway Beach (https://copblaster.com/blast/25800/suspended-nypd-officer-david-ivan-afanador-choke-hold-caught-on-tape). He was suspended without pay for that incident, but despite that case still pending before the courts, the NYPD had reassigned him to restricted duty due to his inability to legally carry a firearm. He has again been suspended without pay for this incident. Hopefully he will be officially fired finally.
In 2016, Afanador was acquitted of charges stemming from the pistol whipping of a 16 year old boy that broke two of his teeth during a drug bust. That beating was caught on camera, but the jury did not consider that behavior to be criminal. We are not sure exactly why he was acquitted, but it probably had to do with an argument that the pistol whipping was done pursuant to the arrest of a "noncompliant" victim and therefore protected by the shroud of qualified immunity.