NOPD releases body-cam video from two 2015 fatal shootings
4th April 2016 · 0 Comments
On last Wednesday, the NOPD released video captured from body-worn cameras that show what happened in two fatal, officer-involved shootings from 2015, the first time the department has done so since the body-cams were first installed in 2014.
The body-cam footage captured the NOPD fatal shooting of 37-year-old Omarr Jackson in Central City in January 2015 and the police killing of 22-year-old Jared Johnson in eastern New Orleans last April.
The officers involved in both shootings have been cleared of any wrongdoing by the department and allowed to return to active duty. The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office reportedly decided that it would not press charges against any of the officers involved in the fatal shootings.
The NOPD, which has been under a federally mandated consent decree aimed at bringing the department up to federal standards for constitutional policing, came under fire last year after a police officer turned off her body camera before shooting a suspect in the head. The incident went unreported to the public for two days and ultimately led to the resignation of then NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas.
Current NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told The New Orleans Advocate last week that the decision to release the body-cam footage from the two incidents to the public was “a deliberate attempt to be transparent and to be accountable.
“These videos eliminate ‘he said, she said’ arguments,” Harrison explained. “This is cutting-edge policy.”
Ophelia Cooper, the mother of Omarr Jackson, told The New Orleans Advocate that she and her family were not at all pleased to learn about the NOPD’s plans to release the body-cam video of her son’s death. She called NOPD Public Integrity Bureau deputy chief Arlinda Westbrook to voice her disapproval.
“I told her I was upset,” Cooper told The New Orleans Advocate last week. “I said, ‘You’re unearthing wounds that we took months to heal. And why so late?”
Although The Advocate found that in an initial incident report NOPD Det. Ashley Boult wrote that Omarr Johnson had “fired gunshots” at officers, NOPD officials said Wednesday that they had determined that Johnson had never fired his weapon.
Although neither officer in the video can be heard telling Johnson to drop his weapon, Westbrook said she believed the officers were justified in shooting him.
“You don’t wait to get shot until you shoot,” Westbrook told The New Orleans Advocate. “When a subject points a gun toward you, you have the ability to use force. They have a split second to make decisions.”
In each of the two fatal shooting incidents, one of the officers failed to activate his body-worn camera, a mistake for which each has been disciplined, according to Westbrook.
Cooper accused the NOPD of releasing the video of her son’s fatal shooting to improve its public image.
The Office of the Independent Police Monitor, an agency created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and several deadly NOPD shootings, reportedly supported the release of the body-cam videos and viewed it as a step forward for the city’s embattled police department.
“OIPM applauds any steps the administration takes to be more open and transparent with the public it serves,” Deputy Police Monitor Ursula Price said in a statement. “Video evidence is generally, and in both of these cases, very helpful in determining safety, training and accountability issues.”
NOPD officials said under the new video-release policy it finalized in February, the department will first consult with the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office, the City Attorney’s Office and the NOPD’s Compliance Bureau, the office tasked with ensuring compliance with the 492-point federal consent decree which began its implementation in August 2013.
The consent decree came on the heels of a scathing 2011 U.S. Department of Justice report that said the NOPD was rife with corruption and abuse.
This article originally published in the April 4, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
