Man with fake gun shot by police, video shows
Video released by the Los Angeles Police Department shows officers screaming at a man to drop a gun in front of the department’s Olympic station one afternoon last month before he begins to lift it in their direction and is shot by an officer with a shotgun.
At one point in the video, which includes graphic images and profanity, the man — later identified as Nakiea Brown, 35, of Los Angeles — appears to tell officers to shoot him.
“I can’t help you with that in your hand!” an officer says.
“Shoot me then,” Brown appears to say back. “No!” the officer says. Brown was shot shortly thereafter by the officer with the shotgun.
Video from that officer’s body camera, released Sunday by the LAPD, shows him fire after Brown appears to lift the weapon in his hand upward in the direction of the officers.
No officers were injured. LAPD Chief Michel Moore has said the weapon was an “imitation” firearm, and that Brown, who was taken to a hospital for treatment, has been charged with brandishing the weapon.
The shooting occurred about 2:20 p.m. on March 23, amid an unusual string of LAPD shootings that caught officials’ attention, and which they said they would be reviewing.
The department also has released footage in two of the other shootings, one in which a SWAT officer was shot before the suspect was killed and another in which officers shot a man as he allegedly attempted to attack a victim with a knife.
The incident began after officers who were helping another person outside the Olympic station noticed Brown standing nearby and then realized he had what appeared to be a gun in his hand.
Officers at the front entrance to the station, closed to the public under COVID-19 restrictions, immediately ordered him to drop the weapon. A crowd of officers near the entrance drew their weapons and called for backup.
Video shows two officers in a patrol vehicle then roll up to the scene, with the passenger holding a shotgun. They get out and confront Brown from along a wall in front of the station.
“Hey! Drop the f—ing gun,” says the officer with the shotgun, as his partner tells him to get more cover. “Drop the gun or you’re gonna get dropped.”
“Drop the gun, bro! It doesn’t have to go this way,” the second officer says.
The second officer then advises the officer with the shotgun to move backward, to try to get more cover.
“Get a little bit of cover. You’ve got range. You got time. You got time,” the second officer says.
LAPD policy calls on officers to use cover and to try to de-escalate situations if they can do so safely.
After Brown is shot, the officers move forward quickly, kick the imitation gun on the ground away from Brown and then handcuff him before he is taken to the hospital.
The shooting remains under investigation.
As of last week, LAPD officers had been involved in 12 shootings in 2021, compared with six at the same point last year. Four of this year’s shootings were fatal, compared with one in the year-earlier period.
The number of shootings puts the LAPD well above the pace of police shootings in the last two years, when the department reached 30-year lows in such shootings.