Philadelphia officials are being asked how police officers responding to celebratory New Year's Eve gunfire ended up shooting innocent bystanders.
It's the second year in a row that it's happened.
This year, police chasing an armed reveler shot into a house where a party was going on. The shots left one man in a coma, a second man wounded and a 9-year-old boy with a graze wound Police who were chasing an armed reveler, shot into a house filled with party goers, leaving one in a coma and a 9-year-old boy with a graze wound to the chest.
A year ago, officers shot a man in the back of the head and killed him when he tried to flee as neighbors shot guns into the air.
The new incident comes as Commissioner Sylvester Johnson ends a six-year tenure marred by gun violence and Philly police responses to it.
"It seems that there's too much of a policy to shoot first and worry about the outcome later," said Bruce Ginsburg, an attorney representing two of the shooting victims. "It puts everybody in the city in danger.
Mr. Johnson defended his officers but promised an investigation into the incident.
"It's hard for you to say when an officer has a gun pointed at him, is he reacting too fast? We had one (officer) killed, we had six others who were shot" this year, he said Thursday at his final news conference.
His replacement, Charles Ramsey, has pledged to address the number of police shootings. Mr. Ramsey, formerly the police chief of Washington, D.C., said such shootings there fell 77 percent during his tenure.
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