The Ohio police officers who fatally shot Jayland Walker muted their body cameras shortly after the shooting, newly released video reveals.
Walker, a 25-year-old Black man, was shot 46 times by Akron cops after a car chase on June 27.
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After the shooting, eight officers who fired their weapons were told to walk away from the scene, according to body-camera footage obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal. The officers are then seen muting their body cameras, standing in a circle and chatting. What they were talking about remains unclear.
“We’re all supposed to follow (rules), and after they shoot and end the life of Pam Walker’s son, they turn off their mics, they turn off their cameras,” Walker family attorney Bobby DiCello was quoted as saying Tuesday by the Beacon Journal. “What did they say? What did they do?”
The lawyer also accused the Akron police department of lacking transparency, noting that they released only snippets of body-camera footage before the Beacon Journal requested full footage of the incident. Akron recently passed an ordinance requiring all body-camera video to be released.
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“Stop insulting us with your silence and your violence,” DiCello said Tuesday.
Akron cops previously came under criticism for using tear gas on people protesting over Walker’s death.
Police tried to pull Walker over for a traffic stop in June, but he sped away. Cops chased him down a highway and later said traffic cameras captured him firing a bullet out of his window.
Walker exited the highway and pulled into a parking lot before taking off on foot. When he stopped and turned in the parking lot, eight officers opened fire.
Cops said they found a gun in Walker’s car, though a lawyer for his family has argued there are no signs from inside the car that a gun went off. After the shooting, cops handcuffed Walker’s body as he lay dying.
“We don’t treat animals that way,” Walker family attorney Paige White said after the shooting. “Time and again, what we see across this country are white people who are able to commit crimes, to slaughter people and who live to tell the tale. Jayland Walker wasn’t able to do that.”
The investigation by Ohio State Police is ongoing.
