Police in Akron, Ohio, have released body-camera footage of the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy, in an incident the city’s mayor called “deeply troubling”.
Video of the Thanksgiving night killing of Jazmir Tucker does not clearly show what led up to the shooting, but suggests that an officer quickly fired at the teenager upon encountering him, and that a group of officers waited seven minutes to approach the boy after he had been shot. The family’s attorneys have said officers did not start rendering aid for 10 minutes.
“In hindsight, the amount of time that expired between the shooting and the initiation of physical aid to Jazmir is deeply troubling to me,” Akron’s mayor, Shammas Malik, said in a statement on Thursday, alongside the release of the footage. “I want to be clear that any unreasonable delay in the rendering of aid by police officers is unacceptable and has no place in Akron.”
Police have said that two patrol officers heard nearby gunshots just after 11pm on 28 November and got out of their parked car to investigate. The officers then encountered Jazmir and ran after him, officials said. One officer fired his assault rifle at the teen, fatally striking him. The boy was later pronounced dead at a hospital and no officers were injured.
The boy was found with a gun in a zipped-up pocket, raising concerns about why lethal force had been used, Malik said: “Why did the officer decide to use his weapon?”
The roughly eight-minute video released by police is difficult to decipher. The sound is off for the first 30 seconds, which is standard when a body camera first turns on. The shooting happens within that timeframe. The footage suggests the officer was chasing Jazmir, raised his rifle and fired at him for about three seconds, potentially shooting about seven times.
The shooting officer’s arms and long gun, however, block the camera’s view, and Jazmir is not visible in the moments before and during the shooting.
Once the sound on the footage begins, that officer and others are heard yelling at Jazmir, who is on the ground, repeatedly telling the unresponsive teen to raise his hands. Between eight and 10 officers ultimately converge on Jazmir about seven minutes after he is shot. At that point, officers handcuff him and search his pockets. Police have not released details about what any of the officers did to try to save his life.
The mayor said the footage left him with “serious questions”, including why officers did not activate their cameras upon arrival. He said their cameras eventually started automatically recording due to the presence of a nearby cruiser with activated lights.
“I also believe that many will ask why the officers used rifles instead of handguns in responding to this incident,” Malik said. “This will be something that we discuss more going forward, including in the internal investigation, and as part of our comprehensive review of use of force, including when and how different weapons are used.”
The family’s attorneys said in a statement that the fact that Jazmir had a weapon was “irrelevant because officers didn’t know he had it until they unzipped his pocket after he was shot”.
“The police department did a number of things tactically wrong in this case, starting with the aggressiveness that they initiated this pursuit … These officers came out with the intent to do one thing: shoot and kill,” the attorney Robert Gresham said in a statement. “What I perceive to be the biggest issue here is there’s a culture of violence in this particular police department.”
Stanley Jackson, another family attorney, added: “The mayor and the police department weaponized the police by allowing them to carry assault rifles, right? And then, the police department weaponizes Jaz’s skin and his youth. That’s the problem.”
At a news conference, Jazmir’s relatives said they are devastated by his death. Ashley Greene said her son was a “great kid”, adding she was “extremely hurt that I couldn’t help my baby”.
“It hurt me to see that no one helped my baby,” Greene said, according to Fox 8 News. “The police never addressed us. I had to find out that was my son through social media.”
Jazmir’s great-aunt, Connie Sutton, described him as a child who was always laughing: “Everybody loved Jaz, and Jaz loved everybody else.”
The officer who fired the shots has been on the force for nearly five years. He and his partner were placed on paid administrative leave, per department policy, and their names have not been released.
Brian Harding, Akron’s police chief, said in a statement: “Our community, our department, and most importantly, Jazmir’s family deserve and need answers to those questions.”
The Ohio bureau of criminal investigation is leading the inquiry, and Akron police are conducting a separate internal investigation.
In October, the city of Akron paid the family of Jayland Walker a $4.8m settlement, after eight police officers fired 94 bullets at the 25-year-old in a 2022 incident that sparked widespread protests. A grand jury declined to indict the officers last year over the killing, which began with a traffic stop over a broken taillight.
On Friday, the Ohio supreme court ruled that the city could continue to conceal the names of the officers who shot Walker.
