A New York City police officer was shot in the toe yesterday, apparently by another officer, during a scuffle with suspected drug dealers in a Harlem apartment building, the police said.
John Hill, chief of Manhattan detectives, said the shooting occurred during a "buy and bust" operation by a nine-member Tactical Narcotic Team operating in Harlem. He said Officer Jose Ramos was shot in the toe during a scuffle with four suspects, of whom two were arrested and two escaped.
Chief Hill said the details of the incident were still under investigation, and he would not confirm that Officer Ramos was shot by another officer. But he said that one shot had been fired by an officer during the confrontation and that the officers involved did not report any gunfire by the suspects.
"One shot was fired by a police officer during the whole incident," Chief Hill said.
Asked if that meant Officer Ramos was wounded by a fellow officer, Chief Hill said, "We're not willing to speculate -- the matter is still under investigation."
But Chief Hill said a gun holster that did not belong to the police officers was found in the lobby of the building where the shooting occurred, and he speculated that one of the suspects who escaped might have been armed.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton visited Officer Ramos at Presbyterian Hospital, where he was treated and released.
Chief Hill said two undercover members of the T.N.T. team entered the lobby of 624 West 139th Street about 4 P.M. and bought two $10 tins of cocaine from four suspects. Telling the suspects they wanted to buy more, the two officers walked out of the lobby and then rushed back in with other members of the team who were waiting outside ready to pounce.
Chief Hill said it was then that a scuffle occurred and Officer Ramos, who is 30 years old, was shot. He also said he could not identify the two suspects who were arrested until a police identity check was completed.
He said they would be charged with selling narcotics and reckless assault on an officer.
Officer Ramos was the second officer to be wounded by gunfire so far this year -- both apparently by other officers. On Jan. 11, Officer Kevin Sherman was shot in the leg when he and other officers in the 75th Precinct in the East New York section of Brooklyn summoned by a report of a "man with a gun" confronted a suspect in the basement of a house where drugs were sold.
Officer Sherman was shot in the leg, apparently by another officer, and the suspect, Shu'aib Abdul Latif, was shot to death. The police said they did not find another gun at the scene.
The only officer to be killed in the line of duty so far this year was Nicholas DeMutiis, who died on Monday night when a man fleeing in a stolen car crashed into Officer DeMutiis's car, which was blocking an intersection in Ozone Park, Queens.
