They headed east on East 151st Street to find a chase unfolding, one person running down the middle of the street, another following with a handgun. The officers ordered the second figure to drop his gun. Instead, another shot rang out.
One of the officers fired a single shot. The bullet struck the gunman in his lower left jaw, killing him.
The suspect, Shaaliver Douse, was believed to be part of a youth gang on East 169th Street called the Nine. He lived at a nearby housing project, and court records showed he had been caught with a gun at least once before; his last brush with the law involved his arrest on a charge of attempted murder, after a rival gang member was shot in May. All this, the police said, at age 14.
The shooting of Shaaliver appeared to fall within the guidelines for using deadly force, police officials said. Nonetheless, the shooting seemed to frame the uneasy confluence of issues that the Police Department constantly grapples with in high-crime neighborhoods like Shaaliver’s: the youth gangs that still run roughshod over parts of the Bronx; the prevalence of illegal guns on the streets; and the waves of rookie officers sent in to patrol those streets each year.
