Syracuse teen charged for attempted armed robbery in Clay
Sheriff deputies said that when they arrived, they spoke to the victim, who reported that the suspect had attempted to rob him of his phone and vehicle at gunpoint. Police say that the suspect ran away after failing to steal the victim's property.
Through a description of the suspect provided by the victim, the Sheriff's Office and the New York State Police were able to find the suspect, who has been identified as 18-year-old Gabron Polk of Syracuse, in the woods behind Wetzel Road Elementary School.
Polk was arrested about 30 minutes after the police were originally called. Sheriff's Deputies reported finding a 9mm 'ghost gun' in Polk's possession at the time of his arrest.
Polk was charged with the following offenses:
Attempted Robbery in the First Degree (Class B Felony) – Forcible theft with a deadly weapon.
Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Second Degree (Class C Felony) – Possession of a loaded firearm.
Criminal Use of a Firearm in the Second Degree (Class C Felony) – Display of a weapon during a felony.
Criminal Possession of a Firearm (Class E Felony).
Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Fourth Degree (Class A Misdemeanor) – Possession of a 'ghost gun.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Los Angeles Times
15 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
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'Because what it tells us, just like with George Floyd, if we don't record the video, we can see what they put in the police report with George Floyd before they realized the video existed.' McNeil was pulled over that day because officers said his headlights should have been on because of bad weather, his lawyers said. His camera shows him asking the officers what he did wrong. Seconds later, an officer smashes his window, strikes him as he sat in the driver's seat and then pulls him from the car and punches him in the head. After being knocked to the ground, McNeil was punched six more times in his right thigh, a police report states. The incident reports don't describe the officer punching McNeil in the head. The officer, who pulled McNeil over and then struck him, described the force this way in his report: 'Physical force was applied to the suspect and he was taken to the ground.' 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Waters acknowledged those limitations at a news conference last year, as he narrated video of a wild brawl between officers and a fan in the stands at EverBank Stadium during a college football game last year between Florida and Georgia. The sheriff showed the officers' body-cam videos during the start of the confrontation near the top of the stadium. But when the officers subdued the suspect and were pressing against him, the footage didn't capture much, so the sheriff switched to stadium security video shot from a longer distance away. In McNeil's case, the body-cam video didn't clearly capture the punches thrown. If it had, the case would have been investigated right away, the sheriff said. For the last 20 years, Brunson has been interviewing young Black men in several U.S. cities about their encounters with law enforcement. When he began submitting research papers for academic review, many readers didn't believe the men's stories of being brutalized by officers. 'People who live in a civil society don't expect to be treated this way by the police. For them, their police interactions are mostly pleasant, mostly cordial,' Brunson said. 'So it's hard for people who don't have a tenuous relationship with the police to fathom that something like this happens,' he said. 'And that's where video does play a big part, because people can't deny what they see.' Martin writes for the Associated Press.
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