By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2026-10-08 01:07:34 | Updated at 2026-10-08 02:38:53
3 hours ago
See more of our coverage in your search results.
New York Attorney General Letitia James speaking at a press conference in The Bronx on Oct. 3, 2026.
J.C. Rice for NY Post
On Dec. 19, 2025, a terrified woman in Rochester called 911 as her estranged partner, armed with a gun, tried to break into the house where she and her children were living.
Two officers responded; the ex, Eric Davis, shot and wounded them both and fled.
A few blocks away, Davis shot and wounded another police officer and a civilian.
When Officer Nicole Amatore arrived at the scene, she took cover behind a tree and ordered Davis to drop his gun.
He fired at her, striking the tree — and she returned fire, killing him.
The entire incident took just 61 seconds, from the moment the first officers arrived, and Amatore was on the scene for a total of 10 seconds.
All of it was captured on the four police officers’ body-worn cameras.
In September, Gov. Kathy Hochul gave Amatore the 2026 Police Officer of the Year Award, the state’s highest law-enforcement honor, for acting “quickly and decisively in the face of a deadly threat.”
But in yet another example of the clown show that is Albany, state Attorney General Letitia James has not yet completed her investigation of the shooting — after nine months of probing.
Saritha Komatireddy, the former federal prosecutor and underdog Republican candidate who’s running against James in November’s election, is rightly making a campaign issue of this dereliction of duty.
But it’s been flying under the media’s radar — because the scandalous dysfunction of James’ office is no longer newsworthy.
The attorney general’s authority to investigate any police-involved death is another gift of the last decade’s anti-cop craziness.
But as an ideologically driven anti-police politician, James is needlessly slow-walking these investigations, leaving cops twisting in the wind for months and even years on end.
The Office of Special Investigation’s annual report, which James issued last week, contained 41 investigative reports on all deaths caused by police — from shootings to car accidents to in-custody deaths.
It took James’ office 16 months on average to complete these investigations — and 17 of the 41 cases completed in the past year occurred much earlier, from 2022 to 2024.
In many of these cases, body-worn camera videos show the entire incident.
Take the case of Djamshed Nematov: On March 8, 2024, Nematov charged at Queens cops with a 13-inch knife after stabbing his wife.
They had literally seconds to respond when Nematov surprised them in a narrow hallway, ran at them brandishing the knife, and was shot just feet away from the officers.
Yet it took James’ office 2½ years to issue a 12-page report conceding that it couldn’t prove the cops were wrong — this for a 5-second incident that was entirely caught on three different BWCs and a building security camera.
In another case, from Chemung County, a state trooper arrived at a house on Sept. 28, 2025, to find Nathan Novakowski standing over his cowering, screaming mother with a pair of scissors, threatening to kill her.
Footage from the officer’s BWC shows him ordering Novakowski to drop the knife.
Instead, Novakowski turns and starts to stab his mother — and the officer fires, killing him and saving the woman’s life.
The entire incident lasted 87 seconds — yet it took James’ office seven months to file a three-page preliminary report stating that it “could not disprove that the officer was justified.”
Over a year later, the final report is still not complete.
And note the phrasing: James’ office consistently refuses to determine that a police shooting is “justified.”
Its reports will only say that James can’t prove it wasn’t justified — implying her belief in cops’ inherent guilt under life-or-death circumstances.
She all but states as much in last week’s report, which includes the line: “When OSI determines that criminal charges are not warranted, it is not a determination that no wrongdoing has occurred.”
How does that give other officers guidance for the future — or give them confidence that the AG isn’t out to get them?
James’ office doesn’t seek to defend any police defensive action, no matter how proper or justified.
In the meantime, these officers’ lives are disrupted, their careers are put on hold — and some are put on modified duty, reducing the force and potentially putting the public at risk.
James’ attorneys can sit in their offices and ponder for an average of 16 months if there’s any way to pick apart an officer’s split-second life-or-death decision.
If the process is the punishment, perhaps that foot-dragging is her goal.
Jim Quinn is a retired career prosecutor in the Queens District Attorney’s Office, where he served for 42 years.
