Minneapolis police release officer video in fatal shooting
MINNEAPOLIS >> Police in Minneapolis on Thursday released body-camera video from a traffic stop one night earlier that ended with a man shot dead, an extraordinarily quick move aimed at stemming public anger over the city’s first policeinvolved death since George Floyd died while being restrained by officers in May.
The confrontation happened about 6:15 p. m. Wednesday in a gas station on the south side, about a mile from where Floyd died. Police said the man — identified by his father as Dolal Idd — was a suspect in a felony and that eyewitnesses said he had fired first.
The city released a brief clip from one officer’s bodycamera in two versions, one of them slowed down to make it easier to follow. The video showed the man attempting to drive away from police before his vehicle was hemmed in, and then showed him looking through his driver’s side window at the officers. It was difficult to make out more detail. The driver’s window shatters, an officer is heard swearing, and at least a dozen shots are fired.
Chief Medaria Arradondo said a gun was found at the scene. A woman in the car was unhurt; no officers were hurt. At a news conference, Arradondo was asked whether officers used reasonable force, and he said they reacted to a deadly threat.
“When officers are experiencing gunfire, they are trained to respond,” Arradondo said. Later, when he was pressed on whether it was clear to him that the man in the car fired first, he said: “When I viewed the video that everyone else is viewing, and certainly the real-time slowed- down version, certainly it appears the individual inside the vehicle fires his weapon at the officers first.”
Arradondo said the man was stopped as part of a weapons investigation, but he said he had no other details.