NEW ROCHELLE, NY — Police Officer Alec McKenna has been returned to active duty.
McKenna, who is White, was placed on paid Administrative Leave after he discharged his weapon, shooting and killing Kamal Flowers, a 24-year-old Black man on June 5, 2020.
He was quietly restored to active duty on March 25, 2021. He spent more than 9 months on paid Administrative Leave. He is expected to work “inside” and not be deployed on the street.
In a statement today, a City spokesperson said “PO Alec McKenna returned to duty on an administrative assignment on March 25, 2021. The other police officer returned to duty on an administrative assignment on July 4, 2020, and was reassigned to patrol duty on April 4, 2021.”
McKenna was the subject of an in-depth investigation in 2019 after his supervisors expressed concerns about his traffic stops. Those concerns were confirmed after an unusual review of over 150 hours of in-car video. Two Internal Affairs cases were opened: #2019-28 on 9/5/19 and #2019-29 on 116/2019.
According to the NRPD Command Discipline Report for McKenna dated December 16, 2019, McKenna was cited for a total of 158 violations in an investigation period that ran from June 23, 2019, to August 24, 2019. On December 16, 2019, McKenna was given two separate Command Disciplines resulting from the pair of overlapping investigations. McKenna agreed to accept forfeiting a total of 7 days of leave, an extraordinarily severe disposition of the two cases.
The full details are here: Alec McKenna: A Story of Traffic Stops
Kamal Flowers, the man shot and killed by McKenna, was known to police as a violent, emotionally disturbed individual who went by the nickname “Crazy”. He was an unpredictable and dangerous habitual criminal; a member of a violent street gang with an extensive criminal history including felony arrests for drug possession and drug sales, acts of violence including domestic violence, weapons possession, and threatening victims with weapons.
Flowers committed a carjacking in Mount Vernon in 2017 with his girlfriend and a two-year-old baby. Afterwards he told police he “was always strapped,” meaning always armed with a gun.
The full details are here: Kamal Flowers: A Story of Armed Encounters