DC police release video of fatal shooting

WASHINGTON — Police in the nation’s capital have released bodycamera footage from the officer who fatally shot a young Black man, leading to protests outside Mayor Muriel Bowser’s home and a police station.

Deon Kay, 18, was shot in the chest Wednesday afternoon duing a foot pursuit with police officers.

On Thursday, the local Black Lives Matter affiliate tweeted that the “Terror Gang has once again taken the life of a young man,” and it demanded the immediate release of the footage.

The video released later that day shows a brief and chaotic scene. As a police car pulls into the parking lot of an apartment complex in southeastern Washington, the officer jumps out and begins chasing someone. The officer turns around, sees Kay running a few feet behind him, and fires a shot into Kay’s chest.

Police identified that officer as Alexander Alvarez, who joined the department in 2018. He has been placed on administrative leave.

The police video later freezes the frame and circles what appears to be a pistol in Kay’s hand. But it’s unclear whether Kay, who had officers in front and back of him, was intending to use the gun or throw it away.

The video shows that immediately after the shooting, as other officers tend to Kay, the officer who fired the shot begins frantically looking for Kay’s gun in the surrounding grass. The handgun was found 98 feet away, a distance that Metropolitan Police Department Chief Peter Newsham said “does seem like a long way to throw a weapon.”

“Everyone can go and look at the video for themselves,” Newsham said. “You can stop it frame by frame and make your own determination. We will do the same when we conduct our investigation.”

The incident drew a harsh condemnation from the American Civil Liberties Union, which accused the police department of an overly confrontational approach that creates dangerous and violent situations.

“The D.C. police department’s approach to gun recovery has been dangerous and ineffective for years,” said Monica Hopkins, head of the ACLU’S District of Columbia office. “The tragic shooting and death of 18-year-old Deon Kay is the logical conclusion of a policy that not only meets violence with violence, but actually escalates and incites it — especially in our Black communities.”

Hopkins called for an overhaul of D.C.’S approach to guns on the streets to “focus on non-police solutions that address the underlying roots of community violence instead of continuing aggressive police tactics.”

Bowser said her administration had rushed to release the video “to help the public answer some questions. What I know is that our officer was trying to take guns off the street, and what I know is that he encountered somebody with a gun.”

Authorities did not release bodycamera video from other officers on the scene.

Emergency legislation passed by the D.C. Council in June requires the police to release any body-camera footage from a fatal shooting or useof-force incident within five days. Newsham said his department worked overnight to make the footage public well ahead of that deadline.

“One of the reasons we put it out as quickly as we did is because there’s a lot of misinformation in the current climate that we have — not only in Washington D.C., but across the country. Misinformation can lead to some disturbances in our city, and that’s the last thing we want to see,” Newsham said.

Newsham described Kay as a “validated gang member” who had run-ins with local law enforcement, although the chief refuse to go into specifics. He said officers were drawn to the area by a video posted on social media that showed two young Black men, one wearing a mask, showing off handguns in a car.

“They knew Mr. Kay when they saw the livestream. They knew him by name,” Newsham said.

He added, “I’m pretty sure that Deon Kay fell through multiple safety nets before yesterday afternoon.”

The U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia will conduct an independent review of the shooting.