What happened to Eleanor Bumpurs?

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The shooting of Eleanor Bumpurs by the New York Police Department occurred on October 29, 1984. The police were present to enforce a city-ordered eviction of Bumpurs, an elderly, disabled African American woman, from her public housing apartment in the Bronx. When Bumpurs refused to open the door, police broke in. One officer fatally shot Bumpurs twice with a 12-gauge shotgun while trying to evict her. 

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Prior to the eviction attempt, Bumpurs, who had arthritis and other health problems, had told her daughter Mary that someone in the building was harassing her. Mary advised her to keep the door locked. Bumpurs told a housing authority official she would not pay the rent because she was having maintenance problems, but refused to admit maintenance workers to her apartment when they were sent. In one phone conversation, she told a housing-authority manager she would not pay the rent because "people had come through the windows, the walls and the floors and had ripped her off". When maintenance workers were admitted to the apartment on October 12, they checked a hallway light and stove as requested, finding no problems with them, but found several cans of human feces in the bathtub. Bumpurs blamed these on "Reagan and his people". 

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Four days before the eviction attempt, the city sent a psychiatrist to visit Bumpurs. He concluded that Bumpurs was "psychotic" and "unable to manage her affairs properly" and should be hospitalized. A Social Services supervisor decided to evict her first, then hospitalize her.  

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On the morning of October 29, Bumpurs told housing authority workers who had come to evict her that she would throw boiling lye at the next face to appear. The NYPD Emergency Service Unit arrived and when unable to get Bumpurs out of her home, drilled out the lock, and through the hole they could see the naked 66-year-old in her living room, holding a 10-inch kitchen knife. The officers then knocked down the door and entered. They attempted to restrain Bumpurs with plastic shields and a special Y-shaped bar, but she fought free. Officer Stephen Sullivan, fired two shots from his 12-gauge pump action shotgun. One pellet from the first shot struck Bumpurs' hand; all nine pellets from the second shot struck her in the chest, killing her. 

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A grand jury was convened to investigate Sullivan's actions. On January 30, 1985, the grand jury indicted Sullivan on charges of second-degree manslaughter, to which Sullivan pleaded not guilty. However, on April 12, Judge Vincent A. Vitale of State Supreme Court dismissed the indictment, ruling that under the New York State Penal Code "the evidence before the grand jury was legally insufficient to support the offense charged or any lesser included offense", and that Sullivan's "acts were in conformity with the guidelines and procedures outlined" in the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit manual. The case took another turn on appeal when, on November 25, 1986, the New York Court of Appeals reinstated Sullivan's second-degree manslaughter indictment by a 6-1 vote. Chief Justice Sol Wachtler was the lone dissenter, saying that the evidence warranted more serious charges. 

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Sullivan waived his right to a jury trial, choosing a bench trial before a judge only. The trial opened on January 12, 1987, over two years after Bumpurs' death. The trial hinged on whether Sullivan had used excessive force, especially in firing twice at Bumpurs. His fellow officers testified that Bumpurs was still not immobilized after the first blast hit her hand, and therefore still posed a threat to the police.  In addition, two plastic surgeons testifying as expert witnesses for the prosecution said that Bumpurs could have continued to slash at the officers trying to subdue her even after her hand had been injured by the first shotgun blast. By contrast, the emergency room physician who treated Bumpurs immediately after the shooting stood by his grand jury testimony that her hand was left "a bloody stump" by the first shot. On February 26, 1987 Judge Fred W. Eggert acquitted Sullivan on the charges of manslaughter. On August 4, 1987 federal prosecutors declined to investigate the Bumpurs case. Rudy Giuliani, who was the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan at the time, stated that he had found "nothing indicating that the case was not tried fully, fairly and competently", and that there was no "proof of a specific intent to inflict excessive and unjustified force." 

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Two supervisors in the city's Social Services administration were later demoted for failing to seek an emergency rent grant for Bumpurs and for not getting her proper psychiatric aid. 

 

What can we do? 

 

1. Share her story and remember her name. This case is over 40 years old so not much can be done other than that unfortunately.