Police have captured the handcuffed prisoner whose escape from three officers in October elicited harsh words from Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who at the time called the cops "an embarrassment" to the nation's biggest police department.
Gerald Brooks, 39, was arrested on a new charge of escape Wednesday, according to police. Further information wasn't immediately available, and it's not clear if Brooks has an attorney.
On Oct. 20, two detectives and a sergeant from the NYPD's Warrant Squad arrested Brooks in East New York, police said. Brooks had five warrants and had been arrested 54 times for domestic violence, marijuana, assault and unlicensed driving offenses, police Chief of Department James O'Neill said at the time.
As the police were leading Brooks to a waiting police car, he shoved one of the detectives and ran off, O'Neill said. The officers gave chase, but Brooks, who was handcuffed behind his back, got away, police said.
Bratton said at the time the officers' missteps would "be dealt with with significant consequences within the department once we determine the circumstances."
"They're an embarrassment to themselves, to the unit, to this department, and they're going to create a lot more work for this department as a result of their inefficiencies this morning," Bratton said at a news conference.
In August, a woman who claimed to be pregnant fled in handcuffs from a hospital. The month before, a prisoner ran barefoot from his cell at a Manhattan police station and another man escaped as officers were escorting him into a different police precinct. A man escaped in June when a handcuffed man shoved a police officer and took off, but he was caught about a month later. The other three suspects were caught within days of their escapes, police said.
Local
"If the cops were just paying attention to their responsibilities, a lot of this stuff would stop," Bratton said. "I'm very concerned when somebody with a pair of handcuffs, handcuffed behind them, can flee from three of my officers and they can't catch him. I'm sorry — there's something wrong there when that's happening, repeatedly, over and over again."
