Minneapolis Police Release Body Cam Footage of Shooting That Angered Anti-Cop Activists
Minneapolis police on Thursday released body camera footage of a Wednesday traffic stop that led to the shooting death of 23-year-old Dolal Idd.
“Clearly, at least from my view of the video … my officers were reacting to that deadly threat, ” Police Chief Medaria Arradondo said at a news conference, according to the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune.
“The investigation will uncover more details, but if the question is should the officers not react in a deadly force situation and knowing that community members’ lives are at stake as well, the officers are trained to protect community members’ lives and their own,” he said.
The brief video shows multiple police cars converging on a gas station to surround a white car that Idd was driving.
WARNING: The following video contains violent images and vulgar language that some viewers may find disturbing.
The white car goes into reverse in an apparent attempt to flee. Police cars seal off any escape.
At that point, an officer with his gun drawn approaches the vehicle. Police had called for Idd to stop his car and surrender by putting his hands up. Multiple commands to surrender can be heard. A gun appears to go off inside the vehicle, shattering a rolled-up window of the white car. Police then respond with more than a dozen rounds fired into the car.
Arradondo said that a female passenger in the car with Idd was not injured during the incident, according to The New York Times.
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Bayle Gelle, Idd’s father, made an appearance at the gas station Thursday demanding the station’s surveillance video and criticizing the police.
“He was just sitting in the car, and bullets were shot at him, and no reason. Why are we here? Because why were they shooting? Because of color. He is a black man,” Gelle said, according to WCCO-TV. “We want to know why my sweet son gets shot and killed.”
He also criticized police who allegedly searched his home after the Wednesday shooting.
“The police they are brutality. I want to get justice,” he said.
“They was pushing us around and screaming,” Gelle added. “They have big guns.”
“According to the family of the deceased, the police entered their home late last night. They were handcuffed and had their house searched, and they were only informed of their son and brother’s death at the end of this encounter,” Democratic state Sen.-elect Omar Fateh said. “This type of treatment for a bereaved family is inhumane and unconscionable.”
Mary Moschinski, who attended a vigil for Idd, said there is a difference between Idd’s death and the case of George Floyd, who died in May after a police officer knelt on his neck for multiple minutes.
She spoke as the vigil turned into a march.
“It looks to me those cops were doing their jobs,” Moschinski told the Star Tribune. “I marched in the protests when George Floyd was murdered.
“This is not the same.”
Idd was convicted in 2019 of illegally possessing and firing a gun after a 2018 incident in which he fired a gun in a shower with two children sleeping nearby.
He was later arrested while in possession of a 9mm handgun that was reported stolen in North Dakota.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
