Police Officers Slay Elderly Negro

New York City lawmakers held a press conference today to honor the twelve brave police officers whose unexpected early-morning raid on a run-down apartment complex caused the death of an elderly black woman preparing for work.

"There could have been anything in that building," Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) told a crowd of thousands gathered in front of the run-down tenement where the courageous officers made their raid.

"From gangs of blood-thirsty drug dealers to hordes of godless terrorists bent on destroying our way of life, the trials of our noble police officers know no bounds."

"Luckily for the officers, none of those things were in that apartment." Schumer added.

Instead, the fearless officers found 57-year-old Alberta Spruill, a city-worker dressing for the long day ahead of her. Lieutenant Rick Helmsly was not fazed.

"Our informant told us there would be guard dogs and armed gang members inside the apartment," Helmsly said. "When we busted down the door and saw some old black chick putting on her panties, we knew something was up."

Thinking fast, Helmsly tossed a concussion grenade into Spruill's bedroom. Coroners suspect that the shock of the officer's sudden entry, combined with the explosion from the flash grenade, sent Spruill into cardiac arrest.

"Those [grenades] really knock around your common criminal," Helmsly explained. "Had Spruill been a knife-wielding sociopath involved in any sort of criminal behavior at all, that grenade would have had her down for the count."

Spruill was later pronounced dead at the hospital. A search of the apartment yielded no drugs or weapons of any kind, a fact the intrepid officers could not have known when they rushed blindly into danger.

"We got pretty lucky that time," Helmsly said. "If that apartment had been filled with rigged explosives or a threat of any kind, the twelve of us could have been in a pretty sticky situation."

Mayor Michael Bloomberg agreed. In a press conference held the afternoon of the incident, Bloomberg praised the officers for their valiant, unannounced raid.

"Today we mourn the loss of a citizen of New York City, truly the greatest city on Earth," Bloomberg told reporters. "It is only by the grace of God that none of our twelve heavily-armed police officers were lost as well."

Bloomberg added that he had not seen such bravery since the 1999 police slaying of Amadou Diallo, an unarmed West African immigrant who "could have been carrying anything in his wallet."