Police Brutality / Individual record
Edmund Perry
Edmund Perry, a 17-year-old scholarship student and recent Phillips Exeter graduate, was killed by a New York City police officer on June 12, 1985.
- Record ID
- PB-012
- Incident date
- June 12, 1985
- Date of death
- June 12, 1985
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- New York, NY
- Category
- Police shooting
What happened
Perry was shot in Harlem ten days after graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy. Police asserted he and another young man attempted to rob a plainclothes officer; Perry's family and acquaintances challenged that characterization and described him as an ambitious student whose education and future were abruptly ended. The case became part of a wider debate about racial assumptions during police encounters.
Investigation & findings
Accounts of the confrontation diverged. The contemporaneous Associated Press reporting documented the family and law-enforcement accounts rather than establishing a definitive legal finding of excessive force.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source