--- title: Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say | TIME description: New York Police Department say one of their officers accidentally discharged his gun inside an administration building at Columbia University while clearing out protesters camped inside. canonical: https://time.com/video/JG63HIu5/ og:title: Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say og:description: New York Police Department say one of their officers accidentally discharged his gun inside an administration building at Columbia University while clearing out protesters camped inside. og:url: https://time.com/video/JG63HIu5/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/JG63HIu5/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say twitter:description: New York Police Department say one of their officers accidentally discharged his gun inside an administration building at Columbia University while clearing out protesters camped inside. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/JG63HIu5/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * U.S. # Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say [Watch (HLS stream): Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/JG63HIu5.m3u8) (3:40)  _Published 2024-05-03. New York Police Department say one of their officers accidentally discharged his gun inside an administration building at Columbia University while clearing out protesters camped inside._ --- May 3, 2024 7:20 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Police Clear Pro-Palestinian Protesters From Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall](/video/x7UhKiwl/) ### Police Clear Pro-Palestinian Protesters From Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall [Arizona Police Department Defends Officers Who Used a Stun Gun on a Handcuffed Man](/video/uFBF0K3Q/) ### Arizona Police Department Defends Officers Who Used a Stun Gun on a Handcuffed Man [Police Clear Mong Kok Protest Site](/video/Okcv8EAi/) ### Police Clear Mong Kok Protest Site --- ## Transcript On Tuesday, April 30th issue was tasked with breaching clearing and securing Hamilton Hall at Columbia University which at the time was occupied by protesters who had overtaken the building and barricaded themselves inside. This was a large-scale complex and dynamic operation designed to both overcome the people inside with minimal physical Force while at the same time containing them to where they were located at limiting their access to other parts of the building so that RS teams could move in place them into custody and remove them from the building during the course of this operation while clearing an unoccupied vacant area of the building on the first floor one to remember what Sergeant did unintentionally discharge one round from his firearm. The sergeant was attempting to assist other officers in gaining entry to a locked office to make sure there was no one hiding inside the front of the office consisted of a metal frame door and a large glass non-transparent window gaining access to the office through the window and showed the least amount of damage to the structure as opposed to cutting open the metal door jamb. Once the window was broken the sergeant attempted to reach to the hole in the class to unlock the door from the inside to do this. He transitioned his firearm from his dominant right hand to his non-dominant left hand. When the sergeant transition has fire onto his non-dominant hand he began to use his dominant and to gain entry through the window, which is when the unintentional discharge occurred the bullet travel to the office class and into the office. They were attempting to gain access to after the firearm discharge the sergeant immediately assess his team and ensure that nobody was injured. The team gained access to the office and found that there was nobody inside in this case the bullet landed on the floor of the office and didn't travel anywhere else. So it was apparent that it had struck. No one. The office and continued with his assignment as we are trying to do and notified his supervisor at the first opportunity at no time or any police officers members of the public or any protest in danger. This was purely unintentional. It's called an accidental discharge the sergeant at the time was trying to clear an area and I know location that was dark. So he moved made the decision to transition is fire on from the dominant hand to his non-dominant hand so we could better try to gain access to the office with that. He unintentionally, I'll pull the trigger of his weapon and discharging a firearm moving forward. We will obviously Council the officer and send them to be training and re-evaluate him. Then we will take it from there. He's a very experienced officer in the unit used in a sergeant in the unit now for almost eight years with an impeccable record Queen normally don't do any kind of release on an accidental discharge. I do see how she I'm saying hey, this is a operation at people were watching around the country, but I'll protocol normally on an accidental discharge and especially when I talk to the police commission about it. I asked hey anything abnormal about this accidental discharge other than just a newsworthy operation. Was there anybody in the vicinity of this accidental discharge? Did anybody even hear it? Even though the issue members didn't hear it. There was nobody in danger. There's nobody struck a r us. This is a accidental discharge we have that we average about eight of these a year and so my goal here was not to just trying make a story. My goal was his is there a story in terms of hay is there something abnormal about this and it wasn't ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Police Officer Fired Gun While Clearing Protesters From Columbia Building, Prosecutors Say","description":"New York Police Department say one of their officers accidentally discharged his gun inside an administration building at Columbia University while clearing out protesters camped inside. ","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/JG63HIu5/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-05-03T18:30:21.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/JG63HIu5.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/JG63HIu5/","duration":"PT3M40S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/JG63HIu5/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```