Desk Report
Published: 14 Oct 2021, 12:54 pm
Representational Image || Photo: Collected
The family of a Black man killed
by police during a supermarket shooting in upstate New York are demanding justice
after authorities released footage Wednesday of the tragedy.
Police in Rochester, New York
have repeatedly come under fire in the past year over episodes, particularly involving
African-Americans, that raised questions about their use of force.
Simran Gordon, 24, was shot dead
on October 6 when Rochester officers were called to respond to a robbery. The
two videos were captured by the officers' body cameras.
In the first video, an officer
enters the grocery store, draws his weapon and asks Gordon to take his hands
out of his pockets. The officer approaches and repeats the order.
Gordon is then seen fleeing
through the aisles, pursued by the officer. When the officer catches up with
Gordon, the image becomes jumbled as the officer is off-balance. Several shots
are heard close together.
"Drop the gun!" the
officer shouts at Gordon, who 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 level with Gordon's
face. He is facedown and moaning.
With her foot, she appears to
remove an object from his hand, saying: "I got it."
New York state attorney general
Letitia James said Wednesday that releasing the footage "is not an
expression of any opinion as to the guilt or innocence of any party."
Rochester police had released a
captioned version of the videos Tuesday, saying that Gordon had been armed and
fired the first shot.
But several members of Gordon's
family told local media they don't believe the police version. "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 that the videos' release "leaves us with more questions than
answers."
"We call upon the Attorney
General's Office to conduct a complete and transparent investigation into his
death," Taha said. "We will continue to seek justice for Simran and
his family."
Gordon's death is the latest
incident that has brought Rochester police under scrutiny.
In March, the body-cam video showed
Rochester officers forcing a Black woman, holding her three-year-old daughter,
to the ground and pepper-spraying her.
Protests broke out in Rochester
in September 2020 after the death of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old Black man.
Prude was walking naked, high on
drugs, when police put a hood over his head to prevent him spitting, then held
him face-down on the pavement until he stopped breathing. He died a week later.
A medical examiner ruled Prude's
death a homicide, but a grand jury declined to indict any of the officers
involved.