Dashcam police video shows ‘execution’ of California black man: lawyer
Reuters
03 Oct 2016 at 23:49 ET
Joseph Mann - via Twitter
Follow @rawstory
Two Sacramento police officers heard on a dashboard-camera video discussing how they might run down a fleeing black man with their patrol car before killing him in a burst of gunfire should be charged with murder, a lawyer for his family said on Monday.
Attorney John Burris said in a phone interview the dashcam video released by the city last week strongly suggested the officers who shot Joseph Mann more than a dozen times on July 11 had already made up their minds to harm him before getting out of their squad car and opening fire.
Sacramento police have said two officers were responding to emergency calls in California’s capital city about a man armed with a gun and a knife, although Mann, 51, was later found to have only a knife.
Burris and family members contend that Mann was mentally ill and disconnected from reality at the time.
“It is as much of an execution as I’ve ever seen in a police case, and there should be ramifications for that,” Burris told a news conference where he called for murder charges to be filed in the case.
The dashcam audio-video tape surfaced around the time of two other fatal police shootings of black men in California – one in the San Diego suburb of El Cajon last Tuesday and one in Los Angeles on Saturday – that triggered a weekend of protests in both communities. [nL2N1C91JX]
Burris, who has already filed a civil rights lawsuit over the Mann shooting, said he also sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch calling for a federal probe of the case.
In the dashcam video obtained by the Sacramento Bee newspaper, which enhanced the audio, the patrol car can be seen driving toward Mann as he fled on foot. One officer is heard saying: “I’m going to hit him,” and the partner responds: “Go for it.”
The video twice shows the patrol car veering toward Mann, who appears to run to dodge the vehicle.
Out of full view of the camera, the two policemen, John Tennis and Randy Lazoya, exit the vehicle before fatally shooting Mann, Sacramento City Attorney Jim Sanchez said in a phone interview.
Burris said the two officers are white, but Sanchez declined to give their race.
The Sacramento County district attorney is conducting a criminal review of the shooting.
(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Yep it's as clear as mother's milk. They grab him, they put him up against a wall, they offered him a blindfold and a cigarette, he refused so they shot him... It's as plain as the nose on your face...
You have a funny definition of murder. He is armed and dangerous and evading/resisting arrest. He is clearly a threat to public safety...the "threat" does not have to be directed solely at the officer. Use of force is justified. I saw no intent to "run him over". You act as if this guy was on the highway and the cop came at him at speed with the intent to kill... it was a low speed maneuver that was being attempted. If the officer clips him with the vehicles push guard or fender to cause him to stop that is an acceptable tactic. This is real life not TV boys and girls
You mean when the police say "**** this guy, I'm going to hit him" and serves the car towards him, then does it again, you saw no intent to "run him over"? When the car lurches as he hits the breaks that it is a low speed maneuver? You know that when police refuse to recognize behavior like this, the community starts to tar all police with the same brush. If you want to help and protect the majority of good police, you have to be willing to call out the bad ones.
The cops were tired of the samo-samo - ANYBODY can shoot someone-else of a different race and get away with it - but running one of "them" over would have to be at least something new.
(I don't mean to be disrepectful to the fellow killed)
0 Replies
giujohn
-2
Reply
Tue 4 Oct, 2016 11:27 pm
@engineer,
You are not critically thinking this out you're looking at it with an emotional bias. If the cop wanted to run the guy over he could have done it at any time. The fact that you can't see that shows me that you are too emotionally involved in this video and your opinion is formed on the premise that police are out there on the rampage just waiting for an opportunity to kill a black man.
I look at it more objectively, I see a public servant charged with protecting the public faced with an impossible situation of a man who is armed dangerous and a danger to the public who needs to make a split-second decision to affect the most expeditious way to stop the threat. I saw no intent in his actions or in his words. Intent would have been evident if he had said, "I'm going to run this guy over and kill him"... And then proceeded at speed to do so. If the cop was that intent on killing him with his vehicle he could have easily done it. The fact that he had made several attempts and failed, I might add, is a clear indication that he was not trying to kill him but trying to stop him.
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