Armed defendant identified in police SUV takedown, charged with multiple crimes, Nassau police say 

Nassau County Police on Wednesday charged the suspect who was disarmed by a patrol car in North Bellmore with multiple crimes after police said the individual fired a handgun in the air and waved it at vehicles, while police reform advocates decried the police commissioner's staunch defense of the officer's takedown tactic. 

The department identified the suspect as Kiber Calderon, 31, of Lexington Avenue in Brooklyn. Police said the suspect also uses the name Hanna Carillo.

Police had earlier identified the defendant as a 33-year-old woman but on Wednesday identified the suspect as a man. "She appears to be a woman, she identifies though as a male when we speak to her," Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said Wednesday.

Calderon's half sister and a staffer at the Brooklyn shelter where she lives, both of whom declined to be identified by name, said Calderon is a transgender woman who goes by "Annie."

Calderon's half sister cried as she learned details of the allegations from a Newsday reporter. She said Calderon has long struggled with substance abuse and mental health problems. 

A video of the incident shows the suspect walking backward in the intersection, waving the handgun at several drivers in their stopped vehicles and then pointing it at the suspect's own head. The Nassau police SUV then strikes the suspect, who collapses on the road.

At a midafternoon news conference Wednesday, officials defended the police officer.

“In this situation, that officer made a choice to use his vehicle," Ryder said. "He holstered his weapon after having it out. I asked him at the hospital, why? He said, ‘if I fired and I missed, there were people standing behind him.’ ”

Asked specifically about using a police car to disarm a suspect, Ryder said:  “We learn in training that you’re going to use any method necessary to stop the threat — that threat was a threat to my officer, that threat was a threat to the public and that threat was stopped.” 

County Executive Bruce Blakeman, speaking alongside Ryder Wednesday, praised the officer for "using all the tools in the toolbox." 

"We don’t train robots; we train human beings," said Blakeman. "And in this case, it was somewhat ingenious that this police officer took the action that he took." 

Police reform advocates criticized the officer's actions and Ryder's swift defense before any official determination by Internal Affairs or the department's Deadly Force Review Board.

Susan Gottehrer, director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union and chairwoman of the Long Island United Police Accountability Working Group, said Ryder's initial comments that he was "never going to Monday-morning quarterback his cops" is a "completely untenable" statement from a top cop.

"That's like saying police activity should not be scrutinized, especially when we are talking about deadly force with a police vehicle," Gottehrer said.

Serena Liguori, a police reform advocate and executive director of New Hour for Women and Children, an agency that provides services to incarcerated women, said she was "absolutely horrified" watching a police officer strike a suspect with a vehicle. 

"If the best response is mowing down somebody with a police vehicle, I find that shocking," Liguori said. "Officers are supposed to be trained to handle the worst-case scenario and this doesn't look like it happened here. Where is the thoughtfulness?"

The events unfolded as Nassau police received a 911 call about 2:20 p.m. reporting that a woman had fired a gun into the air and was waving it at passing vehicles at the intersection of Jerusalem and Bellmore avenues, police said.

The suspect had allegedly fired a single shot, the police commissioner said at a news conference at the scene Tuesday. Ryder said Wednesday that the suspect had pointed the black and silver handgun at the police and that a witness had seen the suspect leaning on a fence before taking the gun out of a pocket and firing it into the air. 

The officer who struck Calderon, who was not named publicly, is out on sick leave "due to the trauma of the situation." 

Joseph Giacalone, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan and a former NYPD sergeant, called the officers’ actions “a precision takedown” and said while using a police vehicle as a weapon is “rare” he doesn’t know of any rules and procedures that expressly prohibit it.

“Do I encourage this to happen in a lot of these cases? No. When there’s a chance to isolate and contain, you do so, but when you have someone in the middle of the street with people around, this worked out to be the best course of action.” 

Police charged Calderon with three counts of third-degree menacing, first-degree reckless endangerment, two counts of menacing a police officer, criminal contempt of court, two counts of seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and second-degree criminal possession of a firearm and criminal possession of a weapon.

Ryder said Calderon was arrested in New York City in June on burglary and trespassing charges. Calderon pleaded not guilty and was released without bail, according to online court records, which indicate the case was referred to a “problem-solving/alternative court program.”

Ryder said that Calderon, who was hospitalized with “minor injuries," is undergoing a psychological evaluation at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow and will be arraigned on the charges when “medically practical.” 

The defendant is due back in court on those charges Aug. 17.

With Michael O'Keeffe