Another police shooting has been captured on video and posted on social media.
This one occurred Saturday morning when a Miami Beach, Florida, officer killed a man during a confrontation on a busy street. A passerby shot the video and posted it to Instagram.
On Sunday, police identified the man as David W. Winesett, 52. A police press release said he had been serving a 151-month federal prison sentence for bank robberies and had escaped from a Miami halfway house for prisoners.
Police started looking for the man after a report of a bank robbery, police Chief Daniel Oates said Saturday at a press briefing. The suspect was spotted a block from the bank, went into a barbershop and came out with a straight-edge razor, the chief said. The man raised his hand with the razor during a confrontation with police and was shot twice by an officer with a rifle, Oates said.
The video shows a shirtless man confronted by several police officers.
The man takes a couple steps forward, places his left hand on the front of a parked police cruiser and stops. His right hand can no longer be seen — it is blocked from view by an officer to his side.
Moments later, the officer fires the rifle — two shots can be heard — and the man falls backward onto the street, clutching his chest. A scream can be heard.
‘It’s tragic for everybody involved’
The man who was shot was Hispanic, police said. The officer, a six-year veteran, is Hispanic. The officer’s identity has not been released.
Miami-Dade police, not Miami Beach police, will investigate the shooting, Oates said. The FBI and Miami Beach police will investigate the attempted bank robbery.
“It’s a horrible, an isolated incident and it’s tragic for everybody involved,” Mayor Philip Levine said.
The FBI said a man entered a Bank of America branch about 10:26 a.m. and handed an employee a note saying he had a bomb and demanded money. After threatening to shoot a customer, the man left without money and didn’t leave an explosive device behind, the FBI said.
Officers spotted the man about a block away, in the 1500 block of Alton Street.
The man went into the barbershop and at first refused officers’ orders to come out, Oates said. When he did emerge he had removed his shirt and was armed with the razor, the chief said.
Chief says man had razor in his hand
“He was challenged by the officers in the street and at some point during that confrontation he did raise his hand with a straight-edge razor in it and he was shot,” Oates said.
Oates said Miami Beach had recently instituted a body camera program and one of the officers was wearing a camera. However, state law prohibits releasing the bodycam video to the media at this point, he said.
Marcellus Johnson, who shot the video posted on Instagram, told CNN he was walking to get coffee when he noticed a crowd of people with their camera phones up.
“I looked to my left and there was a guy inside of the barbershop … and he was banging on the window with a sharp object, maybe a knife or so,” Johnson said. “The police were trying to get him to come outside of the establishment. He eventually came out.”
Videographer: Police tried to calm man
Johnson said police got the employees out of the shop and tried to calm the man.
“He came outside and was basically yelling gestures out to the police officers,” he said. “The officers were giving him directions, ‘Please put down the weapon. Calm down, we are on your side, we are trying to help you.’ That lasted about five minutes and after about five minutes of that they decided to shoot him.”
Johnson said the man was waving the razor as he talked.
“He’s gesturing but he is yelling at the same time so it is almost like he might throw this at me or he might come at me with the razor,” he said. “When he started moving forward towards them and they start backing up a little bit and he puts his hand on the actual police car.”
Johnson said he thinks officers used a stun gun on the suspect. Police have not said whether the officers used such a device.
In other cases, police officers were prosecuted when fatal shootings were caught on video.
In Chicago, an officer was charged with murder in the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald. The dashcam video was not publicly released for more than a year causing public anger. The city’s police superintendent stepped down and some people urged Mayor Rahm Emanuel to resign, too.
In South Carolina, video showed a North Charleston police officer shooting Walter Scott in the back last April when he tried to run during a traffic stop. That officer was charged with murder and the city reached a $6.5 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by his family.
