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Midtown shooting victim sues NYC, says slain NYPD officer failed to protect him
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Jul 14, 2026
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Spencer Platt/Getty Images
By
Ben Feuerherd
Published Jul 14, 2026
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A Midtown office worker who was wounded in a mass shooting at a Park Avenue building last year has sued the city, claiming an NYPD officer in the lobby failed to protect people from the gunman.
The man, Craig Clementi, said in court papers that Officer Didarul Islam failed to stop gunman Shane Tamura from wounding him and killing four other people in the shooting on July 28, 2025. Clementi filed the civil lawsuit last week in Manhattan State Supreme Court.
Tamura shot and killed Islam, who was working security at the building, but wearing his NYPD uniform as part of what's known as the department’s “paid detail” program.
“Detective Islam … failed to identify a visible impending security threat and took no action to thwart or mitigate said threat, including while the threat was in view for an extended period of time prior to the attack,” a notice of claim that accompanies the lawsuit states.
Clementi’s suit is one recent example of prosecutors and mass shooting victims blaming law enforcement for failing to keep them safe during a massacre, according to Katherine Levine, a professor at Cardozo Law School. Prosecutors in Texas and Florida brought criminal charges against law enforcement officers they said failed to prevent the Uvalde and Parkland shootings, respectively. Levine said while Clementi’s lawsuit is civil, it follows the same pattern.
”There's a big trend right now to looking to people other than the shooters themselves in these mass shooting situations for criminal liability. And so there may be a connection here between this civil case and those criminal cases,” Levine said.
‘Negligence’
Tamura drove to the city from his home in Nevada last July with a plan to shoot people in the National Football League’s Midtown headquarters, then-Mayor Eric Adams said after the killings. In a note, Tamura cited the brain condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE, which football players sometimes develop after taking repeated blows to the head. He also implored doctors to “study my brain” in the note, and medical examiners later determined he had CTE.
When Tamura arrived at the Park Avenue office tower, he killed four people, including Islam, and critically wounded Clementi. Tamura died by suicide in the building.
In his lawsuit, Clementi’s attorney argues Islam breached a special duty he had to protect Clementi and other people in the building by failing to notice Tamura walk across the building’s plaza while carrying a rifle.
They say surveillance footage of the incident underscores this point, according to the lawsuit.
“In short, the video evidence provides a good faith basis to assert that Detective Islam’s inattentiveness and negligence allowed the gunman to walk across the building’s plaza with a visible assault rifle and into the building; all without the gunman being detected, deterred, confronted, neutralized and without building/lobby occupants being warned of the approaching danger,” the lawsuit states.
Islam was working security for the building while wearing his NYPD uniform as part of the department’s paid detail program. The program allows NYPD officers to get paid by pre-approved private companies for off-duty security work while in their uniforms.
The lawsuit argues the city can be held liable in this case because even though Islam was technically off-duty while performing the paid detail work, his law enforcement duties “remain within the City's control.”
Clementi is seeking $24 million in damages. His attorneys did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for the city's law department declined to comment on the lawsuit.
A trend
A school security officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and an Uvalde police officer were both acquitted of criminal charges brought by prosecutors who said they failed to act to protect children who were murdered in separate incidents at the schools.
“I think it's really interesting because of the connection I see to this attempt to use the law to hold people accountable,” Levine, the law professor, said. “I think it's a broadening of the criminal and civil law to punish, reform, hold police accountable.”
But, Levine added, this trend of prosecuting officers for inaction could present real dangers and perhaps unintended consequences.
She said if officers are sued or prosecuted for inaction, they may feel emboldened to take action in all sorts of circumstances — even when police are not needed.
“Do we want to give police more power to act? Are we trying to make police insert themselves more into social problems?” she said.
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nypd
public safety
Ben Feuerherd
Ben Feuerherd covers public safety and policing for WNYC and Gothamist. He previously covered federal courts for The New York Post and The Messenger. His work has also appeared in POLITICO, the Daily Beast and NBC New York. Got a tip? Email [email protected].
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