“For all of us it is a very tense and emotional time,” Chief Schroeder said during a news conference on Thursday. “I think our officers are in good spirits, given the
conditions that we’re in in the city right now.”
The department has put in place several reforms. No-knock warrants — one of them was initially given for the raid on Ms. Taylor’s home before it was changed — have been banned. The city expanded the requirements for the use of body cameras. The city also plans to offer incentives for officers to live in the neighborhoods they patrol, to rely on social workers to help resolve some disputes and to introduce additional drug testing for officers.
The latest setback for the department came with the shootings on Wednesday of Maj. Aubrey Gregory, a 21-year veteran who was struck in the hip, and Officer Robinson Desroches, who was shot in the stomach. Both men were expected to recover, the police said.
The authorities charged Larynzo Johnson, 26, on Thursday with two counts of assault on a police officer and 14 counts of wanton endangerment.
Just a week before he was shot, Major Gregory gave an emotional account at a public hearing of the challenges the force has faced and the stress of having to police a city that some officers believe is hostile to them. He described leading a police response when protesters took over a city bridge in May, his officers surrounded by an angry crowd. “Their vehicles were attacked,” he said.
At the same moment his men were trying to help the surrounded squad cars, he said, other protesters began trying to tip over a police van near Metro Hall.