Footage shows victim fleeing after police arrived in unmarked car and drew their guns
Police claimed the man ‘fit the description’ of a person they were investigating. Photograph: Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
@SamTLevinTue 19 Jul 2022 21.48 BST
Police in San Bernardino, California, fatally shot a 23-year-old man on Saturday as he was fleeing, according to surveillance footage that shows an officer firing just seconds after arriving in an unmarked vehicle.
Security camera footage from a parking lot in San Bernardino, a city an hour east of Los Angeles, shows two officers driving up in an unmarked car about 8pm as Robert Adams stood in the lot. As soon as two officers exited the car, Adams turned away from them and ran. It appeared that roughly five seconds after they had stepped out of the car, one of the officers fired at Adams from a distance, seeming to hit him and causing him to collapse to the ground.
Arizona to ban people from filming police within 8ft
The video of the killing went viral on Monday and sparked national outrage, with civil rights lawyer Ben Crump calling it a “horrific execution” and Adams’s family urging authorities to file murder charges against the officer, who has not been identified. The killing comes weeks after police in Akron, Ohio, fired more than 60 rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was also fleeing, sparking widespread protests.
The San Bernardino police department said in a statement that the two officers were with a “specialized investigations unit” and were “conducting surveillance in an unmarked vehicle” after “receiving information that a black male armed with a gun was in the parking lot”. The surveillance footage does not have audio, but the department claimed that the officers gave verbal commands after they exited the car and that Adams had a gun in his hand as he fled.
Adams’s family said he probably did not know they were officers when they arrived. His mother, Tamika Deavila King, told CBSLA: “He was not a threat to them. He was running for his life.” King told the TV station that she was on the phone with her son just moments before the shooting.
Audwin King, Adams’s stepfather, told the Guardian: “We want full justice for our son. We want cops like that off of the force.” He previously told CBSLA that the officer “hunted him down like a dog”.
Jennifer Kohrell, a spokesperson for the police department, said Adams did not fire at the officers.
The video also does not show him pointing a weapon at the officers and only shows him running in the opposite direction. Kohrell said the department would release body-camera footage. She said Adams, who is Black, “fit the description” of a tip police were investigating, but she declined to say whether police confirmed he was the person they were looking for. She said the two officers were not on leave.
Adams was taken to a hospital after the shooting, where he later died.
A local councilman, Ben Reynoso, said he believed the officer should face criminal charges based on the video.
“I’ve been grappling with it all day. To watch him flee and get killed, there’s no justification. It was like an execution,” he said, adding that he questioned why police showed up in an unmarked car. “How often do we deploy these tactics? And to what end? If this could happen one time, is it happening somewhere else in our city right now?”
Andres Garcia, a local community organizer who until recently was living a block away from the lot where the killing occurred, said the police’s actions on the video reminded him of a gang attack: “I’m very familiar with gang violence and that’s what it looked like to me, like a gang-style hit and execution.” He said there has been recent gun violence in the area, and it was not surprising that someone would be scared and fleeing when two people slowly pull up in an unmarked car and then get out with guns drawn.
Reynoso noted that there was a long history of racial profiling at the San Bernardino police department. In April, a state audit found that officers in the department had engaged in “biased conduct” and cited a case of police using excessive force against a Latina woman who was involved in a car accident.
“There’s not a lot of trust between police and the community here,” Reynoso said.
Police in the US continue to kill more than three people a day, and have killed 633 people so far in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. That marks a slight increase from the killings at this point last year, which was one of the deadliest years for police violence on record.
Sam Levin in Los Angeles
@SamTLevinTue 19 Jul 2022 21.48 BST
Police in San Bernardino, California, fatally shot a 23-year-old man on Saturday as he was fleeing, according to surveillance footage that shows an officer firing just seconds after arriving in an unmarked vehicle.
Security camera footage from a parking lot in San Bernardino, a city an hour east of Los Angeles, shows two officers driving up in an unmarked car about 8pm as Robert Adams stood in the lot. As soon as two officers exited the car, Adams turned away from them and ran. It appeared that roughly five seconds after they had stepped out of the car, one of the officers fired at Adams from a distance, seeming to hit him and causing him to collapse to the ground.
Arizona to ban people from filming police within 8ft
The video of the killing went viral on Monday and sparked national outrage, with civil rights lawyer Ben Crump calling it a “horrific execution” and Adams’s family urging authorities to file murder charges against the officer, who has not been identified. The killing comes weeks after police in Akron, Ohio, fired more than 60 rounds at Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was also fleeing, sparking widespread protests.
The San Bernardino police department said in a statement that the two officers were with a “specialized investigations unit” and were “conducting surveillance in an unmarked vehicle” after “receiving information that a black male armed with a gun was in the parking lot”. The surveillance footage does not have audio, but the department claimed that the officers gave verbal commands after they exited the car and that Adams had a gun in his hand as he fled.
Adams’s family said he probably did not know they were officers when they arrived. His mother, Tamika Deavila King, told CBSLA: “He was not a threat to them. He was running for his life.” King told the TV station that she was on the phone with her son just moments before the shooting.
Audwin King, Adams’s stepfather, told the Guardian: “We want full justice for our son. We want cops like that off of the force.” He previously told CBSLA that the officer “hunted him down like a dog”.
Jennifer Kohrell, a spokesperson for the police department, said Adams did not fire at the officers.
The video also does not show him pointing a weapon at the officers and only shows him running in the opposite direction. Kohrell said the department would release body-camera footage. She said Adams, who is Black, “fit the description” of a tip police were investigating, but she declined to say whether police confirmed he was the person they were looking for. She said the two officers were not on leave.
Adams was taken to a hospital after the shooting, where he later died.
A local councilman, Ben Reynoso, said he believed the officer should face criminal charges based on the video.
“I’ve been grappling with it all day. To watch him flee and get killed, there’s no justification. It was like an execution,” he said, adding that he questioned why police showed up in an unmarked car. “How often do we deploy these tactics? And to what end? If this could happen one time, is it happening somewhere else in our city right now?”
Andres Garcia, a local community organizer who until recently was living a block away from the lot where the killing occurred, said the police’s actions on the video reminded him of a gang attack: “I’m very familiar with gang violence and that’s what it looked like to me, like a gang-style hit and execution.” He said there has been recent gun violence in the area, and it was not surprising that someone would be scared and fleeing when two people slowly pull up in an unmarked car and then get out with guns drawn.
Reynoso noted that there was a long history of racial profiling at the San Bernardino police department. In April, a state audit found that officers in the department had engaged in “biased conduct” and cited a case of police using excessive force against a Latina woman who was involved in a car accident.
“There’s not a lot of trust between police and the community here,” Reynoso said.
Police in the US continue to kill more than three people a day, and have killed 633 people so far in 2022, according to Mapping Police Violence, a non-profit research group. That marks a slight increase from the killings at this point last year, which was one of the deadliest years for police violence on record.
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