BART released the body camera video of a fatal police shooting that took place last month outside the West Oakland BART Station.
The video shows BART Police Officer Joseph Mateu responding to gunshots near the station on Jan. 3 and opening fire on two men involved in an altercation at the corner of Seventh and Chester streets, reported KQED.
As the men fought, the officer demanded, “Let me see you hands, both of you!” Mateu then decided to fire 3 shots at the men and again yelled, “Let me see your hands!”
“I’m just, I’m really really crushed by it. My heart is so broken,” Yolanda Banks, the mother of the man who shot and killed, said in an interview earlier this month. “Your life can be snuffed out in the blink of an eye.”
The family of Sahleem Tindle, whom Mateu fatally wounded filed a legal claim last week because of the killing.
“The other man who had been involved in the altercation with Mr. Tindle had been shot in the leg by Mr. Tindle and had disarmed Mr. Tindle of the handgun prior to Officer Mateu’s arrival,” the claim says. “Claimants allege that Officer Mateu never saw a weapon or any object in either man’s possession.”
BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas said a later frame from the video shows the man wrestling with Tindle had nothing in his hands. After Mateu fired three shots into Tindle’s back, a handgun can be seen on the ground, near both men.
“I know there’s a gun on the ground,” civil rights attorney John Burris, who represents Tindle’s family, said after Wednesday’s video release. “I saw that. The issue is, when the officer was coming up, did he see a gun in either one of the man’s hands at the time he shot him. And that I could not see on the video.”
He also points out that the video does not make it clear why Mateu chose to kill Tindle.
“It was purely guesswork from the officer’s point of view and arbitrary, and that has not changed given what I saw at the beginning,” Burris said. “The issue is what the officer saw at the time he fired the shot.”
The Oakland Police Department and Alameda County District Attorney’s Office are investigating the shooting. BART police are also conducting an internal investigation and a review by the Office of the Independent Police Auditor for BART.
Source: http://truthfight.com/bart-releases-video-fatal-police-shooting/