
Michael Gregory, shortly after picking up a knife in front of three Ansonia police officers.
ANSONIA — The video released Monday showing the fatal police shooting of a man with a knife inside a Myrtle Avenue apartment looks like “textbook suicide by cop,” according to a professor from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.
“It’s a classic example,” said Maria (Maki) Haberfeld, a professor of police science at the college with a PhD in criminal justice. “He knows he is holding a threatening weapon and he is charging toward the officers. It looks like he wanted to bring this on himself.”
An Ansonia police officer fired three times at 30-year-old Michael Gregory the evening of Thursday, Jan. 2 as Gregory advanced toward the officers while holding a knife.
State police are now investigating the shooting at the request of a prosecutor. The three officers who were at the apartment were each wearing body cameras. The footage was turned over to state police and released to the public on Monday.
State police investigators have yet to reach a conclusion regarding the incident. In a statement they explained that the video shows three body cams from three officers: Officer Brendon Nelson, Officer Wojciech Podgorski and Sgt. Christopher Flynn.
“This footage is just one part of the on-going investigation. Detectives from the Western District Major Crime Squad will continue to investigate this incident,” state police said.
The footage is embedded below. Before pressing play, please note that it is graphic footage.
Haberfeld watched the video at the request of The Valley Indy. She’s written books on policing, and has worked with law enforcement in both Israel and the U.S. She also teaches active NYPD officers at John Jay.
As disturbing as the Ansonia video is, Haberfeld said it looks like the officer had no choice but to shoot Gregory.
“I don’t see anything wrong there,” she said, referring to the police officers’ actions in the video.
In the video, which is summarized here, police repeatedly knock on a back door at 81 Myrtle Ave. with no answer. The officers are responding to a domestic dispute. Gregory’s girlfriend had just walked into the police department and said he was at her apartment, in violation of an order telling him to stay away.
Police open the door, at which time Gregory walks across the kitchen, picks up what looks to be a large knife, then repeatedly tells police they’ll have to shoot him. He shuts the door on police, who then proceed to kick it open.
When police go into the kitchen, Gregory is in another room. The door is closed. The whole time he tells police they’ll have to kill him. He threatens to stab an officer, according to what can be heard on the video released by state police.
When police get the second door open, they try to Tase Gregory, but it either doesn’t connect with his skin or is simply ineffective.
Gregory advances toward a retreating officer and is shot.
“He comes out, gets a knife, is very aggressive, slams a door on them. They don’t even know at that point, at least in my mind, that there’s no one else in that apartment,” Haberfeld said. “He comes out very aggressive, and he’s not only noncompliant (to the officers’ orders), he basically challenges the officers. He tells them over and over again, ‘you have to shoot me.’
The Valley Indy asked Haberfeld whether Ansonia police missed a chance to de-escalate the incident once Gregory had closed the kitchen door, leaving them outside the house while he retreated to a room off the kitchen. Could they have simply waited him out?
“No. He could have killed himself and then it would have been on the officers — why didn’t you enter? Why didn’t you stop him?” Haberfeld said. “When you have an individual who is highly irrational, who behaves in a very aggressive way, and is armed, you just don’t leave them.”
Haberfeld said some large city police departments have a specialized police unit with a mental health professional designed to deal with situations in which a person is in crisis.
“But in this situation, where a person is so aggressive, even if they had this unit it might not have worked,” she said.
Haberfeld said police appeared to have been properly trained, especially given the fact Gregory picked up a knife in front of them. Police repeatedly told him to come out of the apartment, to talk to them, to drop the knife, she noted.
“Yes, there were three officers and one person, but it takes a split second to fatally stab a person,” Haberfeld said. “They tried. This is their training. They announced the Taser was deployed. It didn’t work. They were in very close proximity to him, which really makes the situation much more dangerous. On the street there’s usually room to step back, to create a distance. But this was a close encounter and it looks like he brought this on himself.”