On Tuesday night, a judge ordered police in Gardena to release video footage taken from an officer’s dashcam in 2013. The clip shows three uniformed officers pointing guns at three unarmed men before one of the officers shoots and kills one of the men.
The incident occurred outside a CVS Pharmacy. Police arrived at the scene after a police dispatcher had mistakingly reported a robbery.
An officer in the video shouts, “Put your hands up!” at the men. Two of the men immediately put their hands in the air, but a third man does not. The details via The LA Times:
The patrol car video showed Diaz Zeferino dropping his hands and reaching to his right waistband or rear right pocket and making a tossing motion, dropping an object on the ground, the district attorney’s memo said. He raised his hands, then repeated the move and removed something from his left rear pocket, the memo said.
“You do it again, you’re going to get shot,” yelled an officer on the video, according to the memo.
Diaz Zeferino removed his baseball hat and lowered his hands. As he began to raise his hands again, three of the officers opened fire, the district attorney’s memo said.
Zeferino died instantly. Another man was “inadvertently struck with a bullet.”
The city ended paying out a $4.7 million settlement on this case, but the District Attorney declined to file charges in this incident.
