Two Plainclothes NYPD Officers Are Shot in the Bronx

The scene where two plainclothes police officers were shot in the Bronx on Monday night. Credit Edwin Torres for The New York Times

Two plainclothes New York City police officers were shot in the Bronx on Monday night after they tried to stop a car, the police said.

One officer was shot in the back, and another officer was shot in the arm, police officials said. Their injuries were not considered life-threatening.

A manhunt was underway for at least two assailants, said Chief Kim Y. Royster, a Police Department spokeswoman. A gun was recovered at the scene, she said, but it was not immediately clear if it belonged to either of the assailants.

She said that the officers were not targeted by the gunman — as occurred in the fatal Dec. 20 shooting of two officers in their patrol car in Brooklyn — but instead appeared to have been investigating a robbery when the shooting began.

“This is something that they come upon,” she said.

A news conference was expected at St. Barnabas Hospital, where the officers were taken, Ms. Royster said.

The shootings occurred around 10:30 p.m. near East 184th Street and Tiebout Avenue, near the Grand Concourse and south of Fordham University, the police said.

William J. Bratton, the police commissioner, entered the emergency room shortly after 11:30 p.m. and was guided to an area in the back. The trauma bay in the emergency room was clogged with police officers.

The officers were working in plainclothes as part of an anti-crime detail in the 46th Precinct, a police official said. In the moments before the shooting, they were trying to stop a car, the official said.

“They were attempting to pull a car over,” the official said. “The car fled.”

It was not immediately clear whether a chase ensued, or how long the pursuit lasted, but at one point, the assailants’ car crashed, the official said. At least one person got out of car “and fired at the cops,” the official said.

Emma G. Fitzsimmons and Edna Ishayik contributed reporting.