D.A. Releases Footage of August Police Shooting of Unarmed Man, Ruling It Justified

On August 11, Officer Bron Cruz of Salt Lake
City, Utah, shot and killed 20-year-old Dillon Taylor, who was
unarmed, because Taylor fit the description of a 911 caller
reporting a group of men flashing a handgun, according to the
district attorney, who ruled the shooting justified. The D.A. said
Taylor and two friends he was with were “making a scene” before
approached by cops, according to the SaltLake Tribune,

which reports:

Confronted by officers, the two men with Taylor held up their
hands, while Taylor alone was “noncompliant.”

Body-cam video shows that Taylor turned toward officers with his
hands in his pants before hoisting his shirt — a gesture officers
are trained to recognize as a possible weapon-draw.

“Nothing that Mr. Taylor did assisted in de-escalating the
situation,” [the district attorney Sim] Gill said. “If anything, it
escalated things.”

Taylor’s shooting was justified, Gill said, not because he posed
an actual threat, but because Cruz reasonably perceived a
threat.

“Officer Cruz’s belief that Dillon Taylor was armed with a gun
and intended to use it against the officers was reinforced by
Dillon’s actions and the acts of others,” Gill wrote in a letter to
Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. “By the time Dillon drew
his hands from his waistband, Officer Cruz’s belief that Dillon was
presenting a weapon [and … would use the weapon against officers]
was reasonable.”

About that video, it was released with the D.A.’s announcement
that the shooting was justified. You can watch that below:

The Salt Lake Tribune cuts the video off after the
shooting, so it doesn’t show cops handcuffing their “suspect,” who
died shortly after, or waiting for medical assistance to
arrive.

Gill used the video to explain cops already had a plan for the
group of men Taylor was in and why the shooting as it went down was
justified:

I’d like him as my defense attorney, I think. He’s a
prosecutor.

There were
some protests for Dillon Taylor after the fatal August 11
shooting, but they were not sustained in the way protests after the
August 9 shooting of the unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
Local protests over that shooting, and the police’s heavy handed
response, helped propel the story into the national news cycle. The
parade of shootings since that have gone unnoticed certainly
highlight the importance of community engagement on issues of
police brutality.

h/t Scott F.