Kirsten Luce for The New York Times
A makeshift memorial sprang up near the site on the Grand Central Parkway where Noel Polanco was killed.
The New York City police detective who killed an unarmed driver who twice cut off two police trucks on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens early Thursday has been hailed for bravery on the job, but also named in two lawsuits claiming police abuse.
On Friday, a portrait began to emerge of the detective, Hassan Hamdy, 39. He was assigned to the Tactical Apprehension Team — responsible for catching some of the city's most violent drug and gun suspects. Just before the driver, Noel Polanco, 22, was fatally shot, Detective Hamdy and other team members had executed warrants on two apartments in a South Bronx building, handcuffing and taking five drug suspects into custody, the police said.
In 2001 and again in 2008, the city settled two federal civil-rights lawsuits — one for $235,000; the other for $291,000 — that named Detective Hamdy and several other officers as defendants in separate claims of police abuse.
One lawsuit accused the officers of breaking down the door of a man's home without a warrant and assaulting him; another charged that officers repeatedly harassed a business owner.
"In the 2008 case, his role was minor at best," a Law Department spokeswoman said Friday night. She said it was unclear what role Detective Hamdy had played in the earlier case. She said the city's position was that "a settlement in a police case does not indicate wrongdoing on the part of the officer."
In May, Detective Hamdy, a 14-year veteran of the Police Department, helped rescue five people trapped in a burning apartment while executing a warrant in a neighboring building in the Rockaways.
"We were in the right place at the right time," Detective Hamdy said at the time. He and fellow team members forced their way into the apartment and felt their way along the walls of smoke-filled rooms before coming upon five frightened people, age 8 to 22, in a back bedroom.
Before becoming a police officer, Mr. Hamdy served four years in the Marine Corps, joining in 1992 and rising to the level of sergeant in an artillery division based out of Camp Lejeune, in North Carolina. He performed well there, his military records indicate, earning medals for good behavior and for performing his duties above and beyond what was required.
On Friday evening, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly met with Mr. Polanco's mother, Cecilia Reyes, for about 15 minutes at her home to express his condolences, according to Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's chief spokesman.
Outside Detective Hamdy's home in Centereach, on Long Island, a beige-and-white ranch with a fenced backyard and a pool, a Suffolk County police car sat idling by the driveway on Friday.
As details about Detective Hamdy's life and career emerged, Police Department officials were silent Friday about the circumstances of the shooting. The Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, issued a statement saying that his office and the Police Department's Internal Affairs Bureau were investigating it. "The public can be assured that the investigation will be full, fair and complete," Mr. Brown said.
At 1:30 a.m. on Friday, Ms. Reyes, standing outside Ice NYC, a lounge in Astoria, Queens, where Mr. Polanco worked, struggled to get the words out. She pressed the palm of her hand to her mouth in an attempt to mute her sobs. She used her other hand to wipe her tears.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just lost my son."
Mr. Polanco's mother said she did not learn that her son was dead until about 2 p.m. on Thursday, nearly nine hours after the shooting. She was at her job as a clerical assistant at Elmhurst Hospital Center when the police told her, she said.
"They are going to pay for this," she said. "This is not going to stay like this. They are going to get justice."
For the relatives and friends who encircled her, Ms. Reyes's grief needed no explanation.
They lighted candles and placed bouquets of flowers at the base of a traffic light on the corner of 33rd Street and Broadway.
Randy Leonard and Alex Vadukul contributed reporting.
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