Paralyzed by a police bullet, he describes a life changed forever

The bullet, fired by a police officer sprinting into the 3 a.m. darkness, struck Khalif Cooper with incredible precision.

The projectile entered the young man’s lower back before tearing through organs and coming to rest at a vertebra that controls lower body movement. By morning, Mr. Cooper had lost a kidney, half his colon, and his ability to ever walk again.

“My whole life just changed,” said 29-year-old Cooper, who is black, in his first interview since the shooting.

It happened on a warm Saturday in Paterson, NJ, last June, and Mr. Cooper, the father of two young daughters, said he ran from the sound of gunfire.

A police officer, Jerry Moravek, came running down the sidewalk toward the same sound. Their paths crossed, footage from a police station camera shows, and Officer Moravek turned to chase Mr. Cooper, convinced he was holding a gun.

Months later, Officer Moravek would be charged with aggravated assault for his decision to fire his weapon without warning at a man who ran away. In March, the shooting would become one of several data points used to justify the Attorney General’s decision to take the rare step of taking control of the troubled Paterson Police Department.

But that’s largely irrelevant to Mr. Cooper. He is most concerned these days about his inability to help when his daughters cry and the mild indignities that define his day-to-day existence. He can’t get himself out of his wheelchair into bed without help, and his girlfriend, who gave birth to their daughter a week after the shooting, now also has to change his diaper.

“There have been times when I just couldn’t take it, and I thought ‘I just want to die,'” he said.

Mr. Cooper had previous run-ins with police and he had been released from prison less than two years earlier after serving time for gun and drug convictions. But he has not been accused of doing anything wrong the night he was shot. And a gun found about a block from where he fell did not contain any of his DNA or fingerprints, court records show.

“Why did you run away from me?” the officer asked Mr Cooper after handcuffing his wrists, according to video released by prosecutors. “I was scared,” he replied.

Narcia Cooper, Khalif’s mother, spent nearly every day at her son’s bedside during his three months in the hospital. She still can’t understand why he was shot. “If someone runs away from you, why shoot them?” she asked.

Many names of victims shot by police become a rallying cry for reform after they die. As someone who has survived, Mr. Cooper the power he now holds as a bleak, living reminder of America’s police crisis.

“What I went through – I don’t want anyone to ever go through this,” he said.

This week Mr. Cooper filed a $50 million federal lawsuit against Officer Moravek, the City of Paterson and the former police chief and police director. He has two goals: to bring in enough money to pay for lifelong medical care and to drive home a point.

“We pray that the good cops stay good cops,” said Kenyatta Stewart, who grew up with Mr. Cooper in Paterson and is one of three attorneys representing him, “and the bad cops understand what can happen when you make these decisions.” ”

Agent Moravek remains on paid leave. Paterson Mayor André Sayegh said the city would not comment on pending lawsuits. Officer Moravek’s lawyer, Patrick Caserta, was unavailable for comment, but has said his client made a split-second decision based on the belief that his life and the lives of those close to him were in imminent danger .

Isa M. Abbassi, a former New York Police Department chief who was instrumental in shaping the city’s strategy following the 2014 Staten Island police killing of Eric Garner, has been in charge of the Paterson department since early May .

“We have already started providing additional training to our members on constitutional policing and the use of force,” Mr Abbassi said on his first day on the job.

“The next generation of public safety begins today,” he added, “and it begins in Paterson, New Jersey.”

With a population of 157,000, Paterson, which is about 20 miles northwest of New York City, is the state’s third largest city.

It has its landmarks. Hinchliffe Stadium, one of the last Negro League ballparks still standing, reopened in May behind the Big waterfalls, a hydropower behemoth that fueled the country’s industrial revolution. Over the past two decades, refugees from Afghanistan and Syria and elsewhere, eager to build a new life, have flooded the hospitable city.

But unlike Newark and Jersey City, the state’s two larger cities, which are closer to New York City’s glow and take more advantage of the reflected glow, Paterson has struggled for economic traction.

His schools, below state control for 30 years through 2021, had closed longer than all but one other New Jersey district during the pandemic. Last spring, 46 percent of the city’s third graders scored at the lowest level on standardized reading tests, more than twice the statewide failure rate.

And of the 46 fatal encounters with New Jersey law enforcement since 2019, eight have been in Paterson — more than any other community in the state, according to an analysis by NJ Spotlight News.

Every year in the United States, more than 80,000 people sustain nonfatal injuries during contact with law enforcement, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago study of data collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2018, the most recent year in which all relevant figures are available, 54 percent of those injured were black, even though African Americans only make up about 14 percent of the country’s population.

Before the shooting, Mr. Cooper said he never particularly distrusted the police. “I look at cops like they’re people. They do what they’re supposed to do,” says Cooper, whose uncle and cousin are both Paterson police officers. “That’s their job.”

Dennis Hickerson-Breedon, one of Mr Cooper’s lawyers, said it would be impossible to know what Officer Moravek was thinking when he pulled the trigger. Still, he said he believed Mr. Cooper’s well-being was “much more expendable than someone who might live in a more suburban neighborhood.”

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Jersey, alleges that Officer Moravek fired his gun on June 11, 2022, “without necessity, justification or cause,” in violation of Mr. Cooper’s civil rights.

In the spring of 2022, Mr. Cooper had moved with his girlfriend, Kaelah Pace, to Sugar Notch, Pa., about two hours west of Paterson by car, and was preparing to work at a pet food company, the couple said. . . His lawyers said he was in Paterson the weekend of the shooting to see his eldest daughter, six.

CCTV footage from the police body from that night shows about a dozen people walking around outside. Officer Moravek pulls up in a police car around 3:15 a.m. and explains that several neighbors had called to complain. Then another officer radios that he has a suspect with a gun in custody. Seconds later, three shots ring out and Officer Moravek starts running towards the noise, encountering Mr. Cooper on the way.

“Drop the gun,” he shouts several times, but never orders Mr. Cooper to stop or warns that he is about to fire — omissions were violations of state rights, according to the attorney general. use of force policy when he accused Officer Moravek of assault and official misconduct.

The bullet was never removed from Mr. Cooper’s back. For now, he said, it’s safer to leave it untouched.

Ms. Pace, a licensed nursing aide who also has a 5- and a 7-year-old, is his main carer, but physiotherapists and nurses visit regularly. Wound care, following a diet that is easy on his remaining kidney, and the effort involved in lifting Mr. Cooper in and out of the wheelchair are constant struggles.

“It’s just a lot,” Ms Pace, 23, said before crying, waking up their 1-year-old daughter, who started arguing.

Mr. Cooper reached out and set her on his lap in the wheelchair, and the baby smiled.

“She thinks it’s a ride,” he said.

Mr. Cooper said he missed the little things the most: walking to the park; can swim with his daughters; the dream of eventually having another child.

“I wish I could go back. I wish I could go back in time,” he said.

“But I have to keep going for my kids — you know? – for my daughters.

“They give me life.”