Police in San Bernardino, California, fatally shot a 23-year-old man on the run Saturday, according to footage showing the officer firing seconds after he pulled up in an unmarked vehicle. .
Security camera pictures from a parking lot in San Bernardino, a city an hour east of Los Angeles, shows two officers driving an unmarked vehicle around 8:00 p.m. as Robert Adams pulls up to the scene. As soon as the two officers got out of the car, Adams turned his back on them and ran away. It appeared that five seconds after they got out of the car, one of the officers shot Adams from a distance, apparently hitting him and causing him to fall to the ground.
Video of the killing went viral on Monday and sparked national outrage, with civil rights lawyer Ben Crump calling it a “horrific sentence” and Adams’ family urging authorities to file murder charges against the officer, who was not identified. The killing comes just weeks after police in Akron, Ohio, shot more than 60 times at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was also on the run, which provoke widespread protests.
The San Bernardino Police Department said in a statement that the two officers were with a “special investigative team” and were “surveilling an unknown vehicle” after they “received information about that a black man armed with a gun was in the parking lot”. The surveillance video does not have audio, but the department said the officers gave verbal commands after they got out of the car and that Adams had a gun in his hand when he fled.
Adams’ family says he may not have known it was officers when they arrived. His mother, Tamika Deavila King, she told the Guardian on Tuesday night: “Part of me is gone now, and I can never get it back. I want to be prosecuted and I want justice and I never want another mother let him bear this pain. It is very painful.”
Audwin King, Adams’ stepfather, told the Guardian: “We want full justice for our son. We want such policemen to be removed from the army. The police should protect and serve, not hunt and kill, and we see that that is what the man did. My second son had no chance to defend himself, and the officer went out with the intention of shooting him like a dog in the streets.”
Jennifer Kohrell, a spokeswoman for the police department, said Adams did not shoot at the officers.
This video also does not show him pointing a weapon at the officers but only shows him running in the other direction. He said Adams, who is Black, “fits the description” of the type police are investigating, but declined to say whether police have confirmed he is the person they are looking for. He said the two officers were not there.
The department released more images on Tuesday night. A short body camera clip shows the officer getting out of the car with his gun pointed at Adams, the officer giving chase before firing a quick shot, but the sound doesn’t start until after the shooting. The video also shows that as Adams lay on the ground crying in pain, the officer stood up and kept his weapon pointed at him.
Police chief Darren Goodman said when the video was released that “this area has a history of crime” and cited Adams’ alleged past in law enforcement. But a spokesman for Kohrell confirmed that the officers did not know who he was or his background when they approached and when the officer fired. Goodman also said the officer fired when he “feared the lives of bystanders or officers were in danger”, but body camera footage did not show Adams brandishing a weapon, although and that it does not show any person in front of the eyes, except one. someone who appeared to be talking to Adams before police arrived.
Adams was taken to a hospital after the shooting, where he later died.
Crump, the attorney who represented George Floyd’s family, said Tuesday afternoon that he and California District Attorney Bradley Gage are representing the Adams family.
“It is unbelievable that another Baso family has to hide their child because of being shot by the police first and questioned later,” the two lawyers said in a statement. “Robert appeared to be walking around the parking lot when the officers got out of their unmarked vehicle and fired their weapons immediately. Robert didn’t have a chance to explain himself.”
Gage criticized the police department for attacking Adams’ character: “The police made up a false story and nailed a person who doesn’t deserve it because they tried to cover up what they did… It’s just cruel and disgusting.” . If Robert had been white, he wouldn’t be dead today. He had his life ahead of him.”
Adams graduated high school with honors and won many awards and planned to attend college for business administration, his mother said. He had dreams of opening his own shop, he added. “I’ll miss his smile more than anything. I’ll miss him coming up to me and comforting me … He was a good man, confident and a leader.”
The victim’s father, also named Robert Adams, said the officer should step down: “The video has gone viral and the whole world has seen it, and it’s time for the officer to resign. My son he wasn’t a gang member. They killed an innocent kid. He was fun and funny to be around, and everyone loved him.”
City Councilman Ben Reynoso said he believes the officer should face criminal charges based on the video.
“I’ve been fighting it all day. Watching him run away and get killed, there’s no justification. It was like murder,” he said, and asked why the police went appeared in an unmarked car. “How often do we use these tactics? And for what purpose? If this could happen at some point, is it happening somewhere in our city right now?”
Andres Garcia, a local community organizer who until recently lived not far from the scene of the murder, said the actions of the police in the video reminded him of a gang attack: “I am very familiar with violence of gangs and that’s what it did. It looked to me like someone who had been beaten and killed in a gang style.” He said there has been recent gun violence in the area, and it’s not surprising that someone would panic and run when two people pulled up in an unmarked car and got out with guns drawn.
Reynoso noted that there is a long history of race record at the San Bernardino police department. In April, a federal review found that department officials engaged in “unfair conduct” and cited a case of police officers using excessive force against a Latina woman who was present. involved in a car accident.
“There’s not a lot of trust between the police and the community here,” Reynoso said.
US police continue to kill more than three people a day, and have killed 633 people so far in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. That marks a slight increase from the killings this time last year, one of the deadliest years of police violence on record.
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