Newly released footage shows another African American man shot and killed by US police. The footage was released on Wednesday one week after the tragedy occurred in a supermarket in New York.
New York Attorney General Letitia James released two videos from body-worn cameras, showing an officer enters the grocery store, draws his weapon, and asks the man, identified Simran Gordon, to take his hands out of his pockets.
The officer approached and repeated the order, but Gordon, who began fleeing through the aisles, was pursued by the officer.
When the officer catches up with Gordon, the image becomes jumbled as the officer was off-balance. Several shots were heard.
Rochester police claimed that Gordon had been armed and fired the first shot.
The officer shouts at Gordon, “Drop the gun” while he is on the ground and obviously hit by the bullets.
In the other video, the second officer arrives from another direction and kneels down on the level with the victim’s face. He is facedown and moaning.
With her foot, she appears to remove an object from his hand, saying. “I got it.”
Police claimed that the 24-year old victim was attempting to rob the West Main Street Family Dollar.
Someone who called police claimed that Gordon had a handgun and was holding an employee at gunpoint, according to the police department.
Gordon family rejects police version of the incident
Gordon’s family is now demanding justice, saying that they don’t believe the police version.
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“It wasn’t an exchange of fire. It wasn’t a shootout. It was a complete and total murder,” Gordon’s uncle, Lyndon Gordon, said on several local news channels.
The family’s lawyer, Yousef Taha, told AFP, “We call upon the Attorney General’s Office to conduct a complete and transparent investigation into his death.”
“We will continue to seek justice for Simran and his family,” Taha said, adding that the videos’ release “leaves us with more questions than answers.”
Officers involved in this incident, however, upheld their duty, according to Rochester Police Department.
“We commend the bravery and professionalism of those officers involved last week in stopping a violent robbery in progress,” it said.
This is the department’s fourth fatal officer-involved shooting this year.
Back in March, a body-cam video showed police officers forcing an African American woman, holding her three-year-old daughter, to the ground and pepper-spraying her.
A report published in the British medical journal, Lancet, said early this month that killings at the hands of the police in the US disproportionately impact people of certain races and ethnicities.
Black Americans are disproportionately more likely to be fatally shot by police and arrested for drug abuse and five times more likely than white Americans to be imprisoned.
