A body camera video released by the Milwaukee Police Department shows an officer shooting a man on a rooftop, and according to reports, he had no gun in his hand.
“That moment when I got shot I felt like I was going to die,” Smith said, according to the report. “OK, I ran, but he, the officer, scared the hell out of me, man. He got off that bike grabbing his gun, grabbed the gun. Cause I matched the description of someone having a gun, I ran.”
“People just need to see this,” Daniel Storm, a private investigator working on Smith’s case, said.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Kent Lovern, however, said in June that the two officers involved were justified in using deadly force because they thought Smith was armed or was going for a gun. No gun was found, and Smith, who doesn’t have a criminal record, wasn’t charged with a crime in the incident, the paper reported.
In the video, an officer says, “He doesn’t have a gun in his hand, but he was hiding behind the AC.”
As the officers climb the stairs to approach the man, he’s ordered to put his hands in the air and turn around. He puts his hands up to the sides and continues facing the two officers.
Then he leans to get on the ground. The officers haven’t yet made the command. Lovern said the officers thought Smith had a gun hidden behind the AC unit.
Violent Crime Down in 2017
In September 2018, the FBI said Americans committed fewer violent and property crimes in 2017, according to statistics. The violent crime rate—including offenses such as murder, robbery, and aggravated assault—dropped by almost one percent and is still about 4 percent above the 2014 rate. The murder rate dropped by 0.7 percent.“After historic increases in violent crime in 2015 and 2016, we are beginning to see encouraging signs,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement at the time. “But our work is not done. While we have made progress, violent crime and drug trafficking continue to plague our communities and destroy the lives of innocent, law-abiding Americans.”