A sign and cross are displayed on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015, in Bridgeton, N.J., near where a Dec. 30, 2014 police stop resulted in the fatal shooting of Jerame Reid. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
BRIDGETON, N.J.– With the dashboard camera in their cruiser rolling, police pulled a Jaguar over for running a stop sign on a dark New Jersey night. But things suddenly turned tense when one of the officers warned his partner that he could see a gun in the glove compartment.
Screaming, “Don’t you f—ing move!” and, “Show me your hands!” at the man in the passenger seat, the officer reached in to the car and appeared to remove a silver handgun. Then, despite being warned repeatedly not to move, the passenger stepped out of the car, his hands raised about shoulder level.
The officers opened fire, killing him.
Watch video of the Jarame Reid (pictured) shooting here:
The video of the Dec. 30th killing of Jerame Reid in Bridgeton, a struggling, mostly minority city of 25,000 people about 35 miles south of Philadelphia, was released this week, raising a host of questions and stirring anger over yet another death at the hands of police.
The shooting came after the killings of Black men in New York and Ferguson, Missouri, triggered months of turbulent protests, violence, and calls for a re-examination of police use of force.
Both Reid and the man driving the car were Black. The Bridgeton officer who spotted the gun, Braheme Days, is Black; his partner, Roger Worley, is White. Both officers have been placed on leave while prosecutors investigate.
“The video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person,” Walter Hudson, chairman and founder of the civil rights group the National Awareness Alliance, said Wednesday. “He complied with the officer and the officer shot him.”
Reid, 36, spent about 13 years in prison for shooting at three state troopers when he was a teenager. And Days knew who he was; Days was among the arresting officers last year when Reid was charged with several crimes, including drug possession and obstruction.
In Bridgeton, where two-thirds of the residents are Black or Hispanic, the killing has stirred small protests over the past couple of weeks, including a demonstration on Wednesday, a day after the video was made public on a request made by two newspapers under the state’s open records law.
The Cumberland County prosecutor’s office previously said a gun was seized during the stop but would not comment further on the investigation. Bridgeton police would not answer any questions about the video and said they opposed its release as neither “compassionate or professional.”
County Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McCrae has disqualified herself from the case because she knows Days. But activists are demanding the state Attorney General’s Office take over the investigation, something it said it will not do.
In the video, tensions flare as Days tells his partner about the gun and starts yelling, “Show me your hands!” The driver, Leroy Tutt, raises his hands immediately. Reid does not at first.
Days, still yelling, reaches in to the car and appears to remove a gun.
“I’m going to shoot you,” Days shouts, at one point addressing Reid by his first name. “You’re going to be f—ing dead. If you reach for something, you’re going to be f—ing dead.”
Days tells his partner, “He’s reaching for something.”
Faintly on the video, Reid can be heard telling the officer, “I ain’t doing nothing. I’m not reaching for nothing, bro. I ain’t got no reason to reach for nothing.”
Then one of the men in the car tells the officer, “I’m getting out and getting on the ground.”
The officer again orders Reid not to move. Seconds later, Reid emerges from the car, raising his hands, which appear to be empty. Both officers fire immediately, shooting at least six rounds.
Bystanders start yelling at the officers, and other emergency vehicles arrive.
The South Jersey Times reported this week that residents had filed seven municipal court complaints against Days since 2013 and two against Worley in that span for alleged abuses of power; all the complaints were later dismissed.
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Video Shows Police Shooting Man With Hands Raised was originally published on newsone.com
