The Day a Victim Gave Up

A person is a crime scene before the crime is ever committed.
And some people…

Just get there sooner.

Benjamin Rivers,
A name that sounds completely harmless…
Held two NFPD officers at gunpoint.

And it all started with them reporting shots fired at an apartment complex at 942 Niagara Avenue.

On August 3rd of 2023, around 9:30 P.M., the officers came into contact with the subject.

A woman at the scene stated to them that a man was shooting at her car.
And their body cam footage shows Officers Kayla Richards and Ian Sitek responding.

The police were heard in the video identifying Benjamin Rivers as a 53-year-old male, holding a weapon in his right hand, and approaching the officers.

John Faso, Niagara Falls Police Superintendent, said that after the officers directed him to drop the gun, he raised his arms while holding it, then fired a shot, taking the patrol car of Officer Richards, missing her completely.

That perked the officers' awareness, compelling them to fire back in response.

After the events that led up to the shooting, Faso declared that, “Both officers gave numerous verbal commands for him to drop the gun."

But to no avail, Rivers defied willingly and resumed his doing.

They didn’t just leave Rivers to wither away…
The police officers performed CPR on him before he was taken to the Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center.
But he was pronounced dead… taken to fate.

Rivers had no extensive criminal history in Western New York; just spent most of his life in the Bronx…
According to Captain John Conti, the Niagara Falls Police.

But Rivers was a victim of larceny, assault, and domestic dispute in the previous months before the shooting ever took place.

Luckily, the officers at the scene weren't injured.
However, both were relieved of duty, but with a couple of years of experience with the department, the event still hadn't faded away.

As with all police shootings, an investigation is paramount, and the Rivers' incident is being investigated by the New York Attorney General's Office of Special Investigations.

What no one mentions is what happens when you’re a victim, and the world is silent.

This wasn’t the start of the story.

The police were called on Rivers that night, but in the months leading up to the shooting, they were called for him.

The first incident, a larceny where a person took his things.
The second, an assault.
And the third, a domestic dispute.

He wasn’t a criminal in those months; just a man watching his life get ripped apart piece by piece, hoping someone would stop the bleeding.

The system he trusted to protect him kept failing him, and the people he trusted kept hurting him.

He was a man watching the world tell him, over and over, that he was disposable.

So when he stood on that sidewalk holding that gun, he wasn't defying the officers.
He wasn't resisting arrest.
He was resisting the universe that kept telling him he was nothing, and resisting the script that said his life didn't matter.

That gun was the final desperate act of a man who decided he would be seen for the last time.

So what does a crime like this tell us?

The biggest tragedy isn't that a criminal got caught; it’s that no one saw the victim until he pulled the trigger.

And the tragic thing about it is that a man with no options felt he had to lean on violence as a final resort.

Sources

Letitia James-Office of The New York State Attorney General

WGRZ