The 2012 Empire State Building Shooting: Cop Carnage

The Empire State Building is a 102-story skyscraper that dominates the Midtown South portion of Manhattan in New York City. This towering edifice is the archetype for the Art Deco architectural style. At 1,454 feet tall, the Empire State Building was the tallest in the world until 1970 when it was bested by the first tower of the World Trade Center. Built over thirteen months starting in 1930, the Empire State Building claimed the lives of five men during its construction.

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The Empire State Building has had a colorful history. The thing was breathtakingly expensive. Built as it was amidst the throes of the Great Depression, the building’s owners did not turn a profit until the 1950s. In July of 1945, an Army Air Corps B-25 bomber on a routine passenger transport flight slammed into the building in thick fog.

The pilot, LTC William Smith, got disoriented in ghastly weather and just made a mistake, striking the building between the 78^th and 80^th floors. The impact left a flaming 18 by 20-foot hole. One engine tore loose and came to rest on the roof of a nearby building. The other fell down an elevator shaft along with part of the landing gear. Three crewmembers perished onboard the plane. A further eleven people died in the building. The subsequent fire took forty minutes to extinguish and holds the current record for the highest structural fire ever successfully contained by firefighters. The building suffered no permanent damage.

Thirty people have successfully committed suicide off of the building despite some fairly extensive impediments specifically designed to dissuade such sordid stuff. Additionally, in 2012, the Empire State Building was the site of an infamous police-involved shooting. As is so often the case, this event started with a single homicidal lunatic. 

Jeffrey Johnson was a 58-year-old women’s clothing designer previously employed by Hazan Imports. He fell victim to a series of layoffs about a year before this event. He was also in the process of being evicted from his apartment.

Johnson was born in 1953 to an American father and a Japanese mother. He came of age in Georgia and had worked at Hazan for six years. Johnson lived alone and was described by neighbors as quiet and polite. He frequently went downstairs to get takeout from a nearby McDonalds and seemed always to wear a suit. The building superintendent reported that he spent most days after he was laid off alone in his apartment.

Nobody likes to fail. Under such sordid circumstances, the human animal invariably searches for a villain. Jeff Johnson found his in Steven Ercolino. A vice president at Hazan Imports, Ercolino had a reputation as a personable family man. However, he and Johnson did not get along well at all.

Johnson had no criminal record or known history of mental health issues. He had served for four years in the US Coast Guard and had a degree from the Ringling College of Art and Design. Johnson owned a t-shirt company called St. Jolly’s Art and was active among the eclectic community of New York City birdwatchers. However, this quiet introverted guy got thoroughly energized over Steven Ercolino.

The dispute began when Ercolino refused to promote Johnson’s line of t-shirts. This escalated into several verbal altercations. Both men filed harassment complaints against the other. At one point, Johnson and Ercolino actually came to blows while sharing an elevator. Despite having been laid off, Johnson was still a regular at Hazan Imports, running afoul of Ercolino most every time he dropped by. Johnson was overheard on several occasions saying, “I’m going to kill you!” to Ercolino’s face.

August 24, 2012, was a Friday. At 0903 in the morning, Jeffrey Johnson stepped out from behind a van parked on 33d Street alongside the Empire State Building and leveled a .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun at Steven Ercolino as he walked into the building. Johnson had purchased the weapon legally in Sarasota, Florida, some 21 years earlier. The gun was unregistered and therefore illegal in New York City, not that this made any practical difference at all. 

Without much preamble, Johnson shot Ercolino once in the head at near contact range. The enraged t-shirt designer then pumped a further four bullets into the man on the ground, killing him outright. He subsequently slipped the handgun into a briefcase and attempted to blend into the crowd.

As one might imagine, unfettered chaos ensued. However, a nearby construction worker surreptitiously followed Johnson while police were notified. With his help, responding officers identified Johnson as the shooter. When confronted, Johnson retrieved his pistol and pointed it at the two officers. For reasons that have been lost to history, he either could not or did not fire.

Up until this point, this tale sounds like one of so many similarly sordid events that characterize modern life. This introverted dude got sideways with his boss and decided to administer a little perverted frontier justice. Had the cops just cut him down cleanly his story would have likely dissolved into obscurity in short order. However, that’s not how things went down.

I do strive not to make value judgments regarding folks in the suck. When faced with an obvious life-or-death confrontation, there’s no way I could predict with any certainty how well I might perform. However, I’m going to make an exception today. The resulting intimate shootout was exceptionally untidy.

In their defense, engaging an armed murderer on a crowded street in Manhattan during rush hour is just about as bad as it gets for a cop. Neutralizing a church shooter might be worse, but not by much. You can find a video of the event here. 

The two NYPD cops drew down on Johnson and opened fire. Between them, the officers fired sixteen rounds in fifteen seconds. Johnson was dead where he dropped. However, all those bullets had to go someplace. Many of them connected with innocent bystanders.

In addition to Johnson, a further nine passing New Yorkers were hit. Three civilians were actually shot. The rest were struck by either bullet fragments or pieces of debris from other stuff the cops shot. The victims consisted of five women and four men ranging in age from 20 to 43. Though some were badly injured, all nine survived. 

Dissecting the Details

The details were all preserved on video, and we can all potentially learn something from the exchange. Cop 1 presents his weapon in an expected two-handed Weaver stance and expeditiously engages the suspect at close range. However, Cop 2 dances backward while reflexively firing his handgun one-handed. Cop 1 looked like a cop. Cop 2 looked like a gangster.

Once again, in their defense, these two police officers did not crawl out of bed that morning expecting to neutralize an armed killer amidst a packed New York crowd. That’s asking a lot of anybody. However, the way they responded does lend insight into some larger issues. 

Muscle memory is the technical appellation. You do something long enough and your body can execute these fairly primal tasks without a great deal of conscious thought. I have experienced a tiny bit of that myself, albeit on a much, much milder scale.

I was out walking through the woods with my kids while packing an S&W 2206 .22 in a shoulder holster. I kept the chamber empty as there were children around. As I stepped across a small creek my foot came down right on top of a huge water moccasin. Neither of us was terribly happy about that.

The sensation through my jungle boot was like stepping on somebody’s muscular arm. The big snake thrashed around violently and raised its head to strike. At the same time, I reflexively reached for my pistol. My young son was maybe two steps behind me.

My next conscious thought, the slide was locked back on my empty handgun and I had ejected the spent magazine onto the ground. Without really thinking, I had charged the gun and shot the snake ten times, somehow miraculously missing my own feet. I found myself absentmindedly groping for a spare magazine I did not have simply by rote.

I’m not an exceptional marksman, but I do shoot constantly. That’s kind of my job. As a result, those motions are apparently hardwired in there someplace.

And therein lies the problem. Google claims the issue handguns for NYPD officers in 2012 included the SIG P226, the S&W 5946, or the Glock 19. The video was too grainy for me to tell what these guys were using. However, at the time NYPD Glocks incorporated a ghastly 12-pound trigger. The only reason I can think of for the NYPD to mandate such an ill-advised trigger is if the policymakers just didn’t know a great deal about guns.

I’m sure they thought this would cut down on profligate gunfire. However, mandating such a dreadful trigger just diminishes practical accuracy. Such a pistol becomes less a precision instrument and more an area weapon system.

Google claims NYPD cops fire their weapons twice a year. In a big city like that, I’m sure finding range space is a pain. However, cops who shoot madly one-handed because they haven’t logged enough trigger time equals nine injured bystanders.

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It was only in 1998 after a great deal of hand wringing that the NYPD even began issuing hollowpoint ammunition. Before that time they seemed terrified of the stuff. Supposedly they do issue Glocks with normal 5.5-pound triggers now. It’s admittedly easy for me to pontificate while comfortably and safely ensconced in my favorite writing chair. However, in the 2012 Empire State Building shootout we see the tragic fallout from arming folks who were likely not brought up around guns and might not have had opportunity to spend adequate time behind them.

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