The use of body cameras offers a dramatic portal into police work both how officers face dangers and confront situations. Our friends at the New Haven Independent published a video through a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request that reveals a contrast of opinions as New Haven Police respond to an unarmed man with his hands in the air–and believed to be high on PCP–telling police officers ‘I didn’t do nothing’ “as they repeatedly fired taser shots at him inside a Whalley Avenue convenience store, in a scene captured by one of the police department’s new body cameras.” Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city, is looking into body cameras, pending funding, as a new tool. It’s a scene that could very well play out here. See video above.
From the New Haven Independent:
Top cops have been watching that video over and over since the incident it captures took place at 9:18 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 3, inside Whalley Food Market at the corner of Whalley Avenue and Hobart Street.
The video caused consternation within the department, as some officers feared that other officers had mistreated a citizen and gotten away with it. Those officers’ fears led to a review of the incident by the department’s assistant chiefs. And that review was aided greatly by the existence of head-on video captured on one of the 800 Axon body-worn cameras the department purchased and then began distributing to all officers in November.
After the review, the chiefs came to two conclusions, Assistant Chief Racheal Cain, who oversees internal affairs and department protocols, said in an interview Thursday afternoon.
Conclusion one: The officers involved “did not violate any of the general orders” by using their tasers and OC (pepper) spray on the arrestee, 36-year-old Rashae Jamaal King.
Conclusion two: “We do believe that things could have been done better.”
The department is not disciplining the officers, Cain said. But it has ordered them to go to the police academy for retraining.
Specifically, she said, the officers could have done more to de-escalate the confrontation with King before it turned violent. And the officers improperly deployed their tasers, she said. That’s why they shot so many times; the two prongs failed to penetrate to King’s skin and immobilize him.
The department is continuing an internal investigation in the case–not in the conduct of the officers, but into allegations that someone else in the department distributed an image from the body camera video on social media. Cain said she wanted to make sure the video itself had not distributed on social media, before she made the video available to the Independent.
King–who has pleaded guilty in 11 separate criminal offenses involving drugs, assault, and larceny, among other offenses, since 2009, according to state records–was released after the misdemeanor arrest on a promise to appear in court. An ambulance crew took him to the Yale-New Haven St. Raphael campus for medical attention. He has not yet entered a plea in the case. He could not be reached for comment for this story.
He has not filed a complaint with the police department over the incident, according to Cain.
Full story here.
WGAF. Lennie, This is only in Bridgeport
GET ON THE GROUND! He must have been drinking with the Bridgeport kid minutes before the police encounter.
Naw, he was drinking with your mother, pendejo.
https://youtu.be/au1rP52_KCY
Really Ron, You are nothing but a race bating.
TBK You’e just a loser.
It looks like the cop is black with the body camera. If so is this considered black on black crime.
He may have not done nothing but does anyone really think a criminal is going to say he was, or the cops are going to say OK my bad and leave when someone says to the cops that got the wrong man?
@ gangser in uniform.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KD_3F3gu8Q
What do you know about race rekations in America, you little snit? You came here on a fucking banana boat, begged and pleaded to be allowed in and now you call me a loser, call Ron Mackey a race baiter, etc. show a little more respect for the people that were born here.
Hey Godless Liberal I don’t know what all seeing eye is feeding you your shit, but if you really believe I wasn’t born here. You are a big loser that I thought.
What do you actually contribute here, you little piss ant? Nothing positive, that’s for sure.
You should be reasonably fluent in English if you were born here. If not you’re just another retard that thinks he knows everything.
Stop by my crib again. We’ll have a real good time.
It’s all about the Blue not the black.
I hear what you’re saying, Ron. Mr. King had been indulging in PCP, a drug that makes users behave… irrationally. (Check out the You Tube video of a man on Stratford Avenue, fucked up on PCP, naked, running in and out of traffic, shitting on a parked car.) wht were they supposed to do, catch him with a butterfly net?
Hey race bater, are you sure about? You keep telling yourself that and maybe one day you’ll believe it. I remember not to long ago in distance past you. You asked where were the Black Live Matter leadership as a conference on policing “community” relation.
Hey loser, do you have special whiteness that give you special insight on race relation. That must be the white privilege I keep hearing about at the welfare line. SMH
PS TBK I don’t know what Cops are trained to recognize, but I can spot a loser and a racist a mile away.
I can recognize an a stupid asshole a block away. That’s why I slammed the door in your face. Stay the fuck away from me.
Mackey you racist asshole. You had to go as far back as Rodney King what a shame. This asshole was on PCP and could have injured one of the officers. i would like that New Haven Police commandeer tell me how you reason with someone on PCP.
At what point did the police officer know that he was on PCP and how did they know it? The guy in the beginning asked what did he do and he got no reply.
Police officers are trained to recognise the simptoms of different illegal drugs.
At what point will you see the man was a violent threat to the safety of the officers and the public. He was tazed, for Christ’s sake. They didn’t blow him away.
What did the man do to make the cop demand his ID? Does the man have an obligation to show his ID when he hasn’t broken any laws? What gave these police the idea or suggested to them that he was on PCP or any other drug just by asking him for his ID?
That’s why they don’t want police camera’s because that old cop stand by, he resisted, he was on PCP, he had a weapon or a myriad of other excuses they use to abridge the rights of Blacks will be called into question. They only thing that was obvious is that he broke no laws that would precipitate the need for tasers.
Dayy you clueless clown. Nobody knows what or if there was a call to the PD for something that happened. If there was a call to the PD what was it for. If there was no call to the PD why were they there
Police officers are trained to de-escalate the situation. Down in Florida a few years ago a man on PCP ate another man’s face.
Derek, ALL police officers in America have a free get out of jail card, all they have to say, I feared for my life, that’s the universal answer for shooting, beating or using their tasers and OC (pepper) spray. I post the Rodney King beating to show that nothing has change with the police in 26 years since Rodney King. This man was not belligerent or disrespectful to the police officer, he politely asked the police officer what did he do and the police never at anytime answered his question. He made no sudden move, he didn’t go into his pockets.
The findings said, Conclusion two: “We do believe that things could have been done better.” also the officers could have done more to de-escalate the confrontation with King before it turned violent. And the officers improperly deployed their tasers, she said. That’s why they shot so many times; the two prongs failed to penetrate to King’s skin and immobilize him. I want to see the videos of whites being taser by the police. The fact that the police officer is black means nothing because with this black police officer the Blue was more important than the black.
Michael Slager, a white police officer, was convicted of shooting Walter Scott, a black man, in the back as he ran away from a ttaffic stop In North Charleston, South Carolina. The fact that Slager was cinvicted in a southern court should not be overlooked.
You two are both missing the point, if the incidences weren’t recorded by some random bystander Michael would not have been convicted of anything or the fact there’s a failure in policing like what happen in the King case. Its about moving the needle to better policing. but you probably know it just is not part of your game. #racebaiters.
There’s something else you’re overlooking. Uniformed cops are a gang, with a gang mentality. Attack one and they ALL retaliate.
Derek, you have hit the nail on the head, “Uniformed cops are a gang, with a gang mentality. Attack one and they ALL retaliate,” it doesn’t matter if the cop is black because he is Blue first and a loyal member of the gang which comes before anything right or wrong it’s always the blue over the black.
America first police officers were slave catchers, Fugitive slave catchers Fugitive were people who returned escaped slaves to their owners in the United States in the mid 19th century. Slaves who managed to free themselves from their owners had yet another worry: fugitive slave catchers. The Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Law, the latter enacted pursuant to a specific provision contained in Article IV of the United States Constitution, created the Fugitive Slave. The police departments of today have the same mindset, gang members look after their own. One of the best pictures that I’ve ever seen was “Gangs Of New York,” there is so much American history in that movie, people like to bring up Chicago and the killings going on there well let’s look at a little history first.
“Gangs Of New York”
https://youtu.be/wcty-Vw77R8
There are gangs everywhere, not just Chicago. MS-13 is terrorizing Suffolk County on the island.
Ron like extreme liberalism your slave angle might be a mental health issue. History (according to Google) teaches us the first police department was established in 1838 in Boston. The Fugitive Act was a set of laws the law enforcement as to adhere to. WOW SMH
El enano mental ha sido gobernado.
Day I well agree with you the main reason for not having body cameras is more for the protection of criminal or misconduct behavior by law enforcement employees than money.
That being said we have to be cautious about its excessive abuse to undermining policing and the anti-cop movement against cops.
In this case this kid may or may not have been doing anything wrong and being black may or may not contributed to the sequence of event as they unfolded, but I’m sure the cops didn’t just walk in to the store to asked him for his ID. Policing is just a part of a lager system.
These cops (the black one included) was somewhat thrown under the bus for the need of deescalating training. If he didn’t do anything I’m sure like suicide negotiates training, these cops could have got the kid too corporate with showing his ID with de-escalation training.
I had cops once make me sit on a curb. Take off my shoes and socks so he can check out my feet, you freak. (I think handcuffs are a gate way to freakiness) While one cops ways getting his foot fetish freak on, the other cops were trashing the inside of my car, and my only crime was being stupid in forgetting my day of brith, to renew my license. Well that was the crime they found because we were both surprise. You f%$Kin freaks 🙂
At any rate at some point the cops have to gain control of the situation, there was no reason for the kid not to follow the cop’s commands. The cops can’t deescalate what is he was escalating.
These cameras are the end game for the anti-cop movement. Whenever there’s a complaint the body cameras will show what happened either to support the cops report or the complaint. That all I can ask for.
For the most part the youths don’t like cops, even the people who are cops now didn’t like cops want they were young and doing unlawful things.
That’s just common in adolescent behavior because cops are viewed as someone who is going to bust you in a way like snitching you out for doing something mischief or some illegal adolescent behavior.
Cops also have to understand in this ”thin” blue line of theirs, these cameras can and will be used against them within the game, with the game, with in the department.
I remember a case when Internal Affair Cops investigated other cops to bust them for illegal acts in protecting other cops for their illegal acts, and the only victims were just some property damage and insurance fraud. No protest for justice, car don’t protest, just the game with in the game.
All things end and for cops to be equipped with body cameras is the end game of the anti-cop movement against police, so a new beignning can start for lawyers and the courts.
Please remember it’s not a right but a privilege earned. Good luck Merry Christmas.
Ron,
Jayson Negron tried to run over a police officer.
About a dozen years ago a couple of punks were stealing a car. Undercover cops were on the scene, flashed their badges, drew their weapons and yelled “Halt!” The kid driving tried to run over one of the cops who fired at the vehicle. The driver had the scalp on one side of his head scored by a bullet. The kid was brought into the courtroom at Golden Hill Street in a wheelchair, one side of his head stapled closed. (He went to prison.) No one jumped up to protest after that incident.
If you’re going to edit and delete my views and comments yet keep someone’s that calls my mother a cheap whore, why bother. Like everything else with the human spirit. You can try to hide it, doesn’t mean it not there. Good luck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah-WdAwVg9c
This is the one you keep out of my last 6 post/repsonse SMH
WOW BAm I’m out.
Good riddance.
If he was high on PCP why was he released on a PTA? If what they say he did was so egregious why was he released on a PTA? What does his past priors have to do with him being tased when they had no idea what his prior crimes were?
Police are legal gangs and here in Bridgeport they were called K5. Membership in K5 was limited to white vicious cops. Never heard of K5 then you don’t know much about Bridgeport after living here for almost two decades.
Over the course of my life I’ve been beaten by police ifficers, had friends beepsten by police officers, seen police officers in riot gear break up demonstrations with tear gas, billy clubs and rubber bullets. Some of the “defendants” were black, some white, some Mudlims, some Christian, some Jewish, some just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Cops are rarely convicted of murder regardless of the victim’s race, creed or color.
*Muslims
Derek, why were you beaten by police officers?
For being an obnoxious, mouthy punk of a 19-year-old.
And you’re right, I have never heard of K5. It doesn’t surprise me such a unit existed.
Don, I can assure you that no one in Mayor Joseph Ganim Communities Working for a Better Bridgeport Working for a United Bridgeport where Ganim said that it will “promote a dialogue to meet the challenges of violence and police-community relations will even mention K5, Mayor Ganim and Chief Perez won’t and neither will any member on that committee.
The police department has their hands full.
Drug dealers make money from people that can’t handle reality. Bookmakers make money from gamblers wagering on professional sports because Congress decreed sports betting legal in only three states. Gun dealers make money selling firearms to gangbangers defending “turf.” The city had seen 23 homicides this year.
All the while Little Joe Ganim wants to be governor. Mario Testa games the absentee ballot system not for any political benefit but for sport.
How in hell can Joe Ganim be the governor when as mayor he can’t even give a exam for a nationwide search for police chief. Mario doesn’t have power and the get out the vote power that he had in the past.
Mario’s well has “matured” as Texans say about an oil well that is give diminishing returns.