Hello, everyone, and welcome to Police Off the Cuff.

Real Crime Stories.

I'm your host, retired NYPD, Sergeant Bill Cannon, a 27-year veteran of the NYPD.

You know, it's been baffling since the very beginning, the Mickey Steins, the Sheriff Mickey Stein's case, who we all know from this

famous still photograph here, shot Judge Kevin Mullins in his chambers. And it was November 19th,

2024. So we're coming up on a year. But a lot of this case that we didn't know and no one seemed to know from the beginning

was the why.

They were friends.

Why did Sheriff Mickey Steins shoot his friend, Judge Kevin Mullins.

And that is one of the things that we're going to look into.

We're going to do a little bit of a deep dive tonight on was what was the why?

Apparently, he was very stressed out in the weeks before the actual shooting.

A big piece of the puzzle was a civil lawsuit.

Steins was named as a defendant in a lawsuit involving one of his former deputies.

That deputy had been convicted of S.A.ing a woman, and the lawsuit allegedly said that Stein showed

deliberate indifference by not training or supervising his deputy properly. To make matters worse,

the lawsuit drew a lot of negative attention to the courthouse. Just three days before the shooting, Steins gave a deposition for that case.

According to witnesses, his demeanor changed markedly right after.

His own attorney said Steins became extremely paranoid

and that the attention from the lawsuit was putting his family in danger.

The pressure was mounting and the cracks were starting to show

a man who was supposed to be unshakable.

...