UPDATE: NYPD release footage of J’can killed in ‘confrontation’ with cops
KINGSTON, Jamaica — The New York Police Department (NYPD) today released footage from the body cameras being worn by officers during the fatal shooting of a Jamaican man holding a knife and a fake gun.
This is the first fatal police encounter captured on the devices since officers began wearing them this year.
Read: J’can killed in ‘confrontation’ with New York cops
The footage shows the deadly confrontation between police and 31-year-old Miguel Richards, a college exchange student studying information technology.
Richards can be seen standing in the corner of his room in the Edenwald neighbourhood with dark glasses on and did not speak throughout the entire encounter.
The 16-minute video released, shows officers on the scene telling Richards almost 44 times to drop the knife and to tell them what was in his other hand before he was shot dead.
“Put up yuh hand yute! All a we a yardie a talk to you. Put dung the knife down, you a gwaan like you a eediot!” a man was heard saying in the background of the video.
Another man can be heard beseeching Richards, who they refer to as Ricardo, to put the knife down.
He then made a phone call to someone and had them on speaker to advise Richards to lower the weapon.
“Ricardo behave yourself nuh man!” said the person on the phone.
The first officer can then be heard saying, “Ricardo is that a real gun you got there? Ricardo I don’t want to shoot you if you’ve got a fake gun in your hand. You hear me? But I will shoot you if that’s a real gun. Drop that gun to the floor, and drop that knife to the floor.”
Near the end of the video, a third officer appears and asks the two police on scene, “Wanna take him down now?”
One officer appears to say “Yeah, go” and the third officer draws his tazer.
Richards’ hands appear to come up and a red dot can be seen, which police believed was a laser sight attached to the toy gun that Richards was holding.
The video shows Richards getting tazed once, and the other two officers then open gunfire, killing him.
The encounter with Richards began after his landlord summoned the police to the building to check on Richards, who the landlord said had not been seen for some time.
