The Sacramento Police Department just released new video and audio files from the shooting death of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man whose cell phone was mistaken for a firearm by the cops who confronted him in his family’s own backyard. The March incident led to a string of protests in California and elsewhere, as well as harrowing revelations about the numbers of times police fired upon Clark and subsequently muted their body cameras. However, Monday’s report from the Sacramento Bee is sure to increase tensions, as it appears officers waited several minutes before giving Clark any aid.
According to the Sacramento Bee‘s report, police who were on the scene “waited about five minutes from the time Clark was shot before they approached his body.” After that, the cops “spent about one minute handcuffing and searching him before beginning to administer CPR”:
By the time fire department rescue workers were cleared by police to enter the scene — about a minute after CPR began — it appears that Clark already was dead. A fire department medic can be heard in another video of the same time frame saying, “We’re fixed and dilated here,” an apparent reference to Clark being nonresponsive.
Another person then asks: “Nonreactive?” A medic replies, “Yes,” and asks if anyone has a watch. He then calls the time as “21:42,” an apparent reference to Clark’s official time of death.
The independent autopsy ordered by Clark’s family determined that he had died somewhere between three and 10 minutes after he was shot. Per the new footage released by the Sacramento Police Department, it would seem Dr. Bennet Omalu’s report — which also counted eight gunshot wounds, four of which were to Clark’s back — is accurate. As for why the police on the scene waited so long to administer aid, a department spokesperson said, “That’s part of our investigation, looking at when aid was rendered. We will look at if it was appropriate given the circumstances.”
(Via Sacramento Bee)