Slain NYPD officer accused of negligence during mass shooting at NFL headquarters

MANHATTAN (CN) — A victim of last year’s horrific mass shooting at the New York headquarters of the NFL is blaming a slain NYPD detective for the carnage in a $24 million lawsuit filed in New York County Supreme Court on Friday.

Detective Didarul Islam was lauded as a hero when he was one of four victims fatally wounded on July 28, 2025, by gunman Shane Tamura in the lobby of a Manhattan high-rise. The NYPD said at the time that Islam “represented the very best of our department” and was “protecting New Yorkers from danger when his life was tragically cut short.”

But according to Craig Clementi, an NFL employee who worked out of the building, newly reviewed security footage from the incident shows Islam’s “negligence” was what allowed Tamura’s rampage to be so deadly.

“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,” Clementi claims in the nine-page suit.

Clementi says he suffered a “grievous gunshot wound to the side/lower back,” struck by Tamura’s gunfire less than 10 feet from where Islam was fatally wounded in the building’s lobby. Despite his injuries, Clementi fled through the building’s revolving door, called 911 from the sidewalk and was eventually transferred to a city hospital, where he remained for 10 days.

In a court filing attached to the lawsuit, Clementi says Tamura was allowed to breach the building’s entrance “with total impunity.”

“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,” Clementi claims.

Tamura — a Nevada native who blamed the NFL for covering up the links between football and a brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, with which he was posthumously diagnosed — died by suicide on the building’s 33rd floor.

Clementi is suing the city for $24 million in damages, claiming he now suffers from “severe psychological trauma, including multiple daily flashbacks to the incident,” in addition to his physical injuries.

“I bear permanent depressed scars from the wound and I experience pain every day,” he argues in an attached filing.

Although Islam was working security in the building as an off-duty officer, he was doing so through the NYPD’s Paid Detail Unit, which makes assignments to private contractors and charges a 10% administrative fee payable to the city. Clementi claims this means New York City can “be held vicariously liable for the negligence of its rented police officers.”

Suing nearly a year after the shooting, Clementi argues he just recently became aware of the security footage showing Islam’s negligence through his attorneys.

“I did not know and had no reason to know that Officer Islam’s conduct in the moments preceding the shooting may have been negligent until my attorneys informed me of what they had recently observed upon viewing the building’s surveillance footage,” he claims.

The footage does not appear to have been made public.

A spokesperson for the New York City Law Department declined to comment. Neither the NYPD nor Clementi’s attorney, David Scher of Block O’Toole & Murphy, immediately responded to requests for comment.

Following the shooting, police found a note in Tamura’s pocket, claiming he suffered from CTE, a brain injury caused by repeated head trauma. It cannot be diagnosed until a person is deceased.

“Study my brain please. I’m sorry,” wrote Tamura, who played high school football in Los Angeles and had a documented mental health history, according to law enforcement.

His note also accuses the NFL of concealing the dangers of CTE to maximize its profits.

Islam, an immigrant from Bangladesh and father of three, was on the force for more than three years. He was posthumously promoted at his funeral by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

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