Another police shooting has been captured on video and posted on social media.
This one occurred Saturday morning when a Miami Beach, Florida, officer killed a man during a confrontation on a busy street. A passerby shot the graphic video and posted it to Instagram.
Police started looking for the man after a report of a bank robbery, police Chief Daniel Oates said at a press briefing. The suspect was spotted a block from the bank, went into a barber shop and came out with a straight-edge razor, the chief said. The man raised his hand with the razor during a confrontation with police and was shot twice by an officer with a rifle, Oates said.
The video shows a shirtless man confronted by several police officers.
The man takes a couple steps forward, places his left hand on the front of a parked police cruiser and stops. His right hand can no longer be seen — it is blocked from view by an officer to his side.
Moments later, the officer fires the rifle — two shots can be heard — and the man falls backward onto the street, clutching his chest. A scream can be heard.
The man who was shot was Hispanic, police said. The officer, a six-year veteran, was also Hispanic. The identity of neither has been released.
Miami-Dade police, not Miami Beach police, will investigate the shooting, Oates said. The FBI and Miami Beach police will investigate the attempted bank robbery.
“It’s a horrible, an isolated incident and it’s tragic for everybody involved,” Mayor Philip Levine said.
Oates said police were notified a little after 10 a.m. that someone walked into a Bank of America branch and handed the teller a note saying he had a bomb.
Oates said the man apparently left without obtaining any money. Officers spotted him about a block away, in the 1500 block of Alton Street.
The man went into the barber shop and at first refused officers’ orders to come out, Oates said. When he did emerge he had removed his shirt and was armed with the razor, the chief said.
“He was challenged by the officers in the street and at some point during that confrontation he did raise his hand with a straight-edge razor in it and he was shot,” Oates said.
Oates said Miami Beach had recently instituted a body camera program and one of the officers was wearing a camera. However, state law prohibits releasing the bodycam video to the media at this point, he said.
In other cases, police officers were prosecuted when fatal shootings were caught on video.
In Chicago, an officer was charged with murder in the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald. The dashcam video was not publicly released for more than a year causing public anger. The city’s police superintendent stepped down and some people urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign, too.
In South Carolina, video showed a North Charleston police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back last April when he tried to run during a traffic stop. That officer was charged with murder and the city reached a $6.5 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by his family.