[1] In requesting NYPD assistance, NYCHA workers told police that Bumpurs was emotionally disturbed, had threatened to throw boiling lye and was using a knife to resist eviction.

[2][3] Bumpurs' shooting, one of several deaths that inflamed racial tensions in New York during the 1980s, led to changes within the NYPD regarding responses to disabled and emotionally volatile persons.

When maintenance workers were admitted to the apartment on October 12, they checked a hallway light and stove as requested, finding no problems with them, but found several cans of human feces in the bathtub.

The NYPD Emergency Service Unit, specially trained in subduing emotionally disturbed people was summoned, but was unable to get Bumpurs to come to the door.

"[6] There followed the development of a new, special program to train police officers in New York State to work safely and effectively with "Emotionally Disturbed People (EDPs)".

However, on April 12, Judge Vincent A. Vitale of State Supreme Court dismissed the indictment, ruling that under the New York State Penal Code "the evidence before the grand jury was legally insufficient to support the offense charged or any lesser included offense", and that Sullivan's "acts were in conformity with the guidelines and procedures outlined" in the NYPD's Emergency Service Unit manual.

[8] In addition, two plastic surgeons testifying as expert witnesses for the defense said that Bumpurs could have continued to slash at the officers trying to subdue her even after her hand had been injured by the first shotgun blast.

By contrast, the emergency room physician who treated Bumpurs immediately after the shooting stood by his grand jury testimony that her hand was left "a bloody stump" by the first shot.

Rudy Giuliani, who was the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan at the time, stated that he had found "nothing indicating that the case was not tried fully, fairly and competently", and that there was no "proof of a specific intent to inflict excessive and unjustified force.

Two supervisors in the city's Social Services administration were later demoted for failing to seek an emergency rent grant for Bumpurs and for not getting her proper psychiatric aid.

Since shortly after Bumpurs' death, members of the NYPD Emergency Service Unit have carried Tasers, weapons that can deliver thousands of volts of incapacitating electric current, as an alternative to the use of firearms when dealing with the mentally ill.[12] "Hold On" from Lou Reed's 1989 album New York contains the following line: "The dopers sent a message to the cops last weekend they shot him in the car where he sat.