Admin
The launch got here greater than two months after the Southern California News Group filed a California Public Records Act request for the recordings and 6 days after SCNG printed a narrative noting that Fontana police had supplied the general public scant particulars on current shootings by its officers.
Dorsey had cited legally allowed exemptions to the open-records regulation out of concern that releasing the recordings and pictures would jeopardize an investigation.
Officer Steven Reed, a division spokesman, mentioned in an interview on Thursday that the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating the capturing, just lately informed Fontana police they might make the data public. The San Bernardino County District’s Attorney’s Office can also be investigating.
The title of the person killed within the Dec. 13 capturing, Jose Pena Mejia, had been among the many particulars withheld till Thursday. Fontana police had additionally declined to say whether or not the suspect had fired on officers and elaborate on their earlier assertion that officers fired when the “state of affairs escalated.”
Mejia grew to become a needed man in November when police recognized him as a suspect in a firearm brandishing at a market.
Around 7:30 p.m. on Dec. 13, an officer pulled over Mejia’s blue pickup close to Mango Avenue and Foothill Boulevard in Fontana, Dorsey says in a recording posted on the division’s Facebook web page, due to a damaged tail mild. The officer referred to as for backup when he ran a data test and discovered that Mejia was needed.
An officer had Mejia step out of the pickup.
“You have something unlawful on you?” an officer asks as he frisks Mejia, a recording exhibits.
“I don’t have something,” Mejia replies.
But the officer felt a gun within the man’s waistband, Dorsey says, and at that second, Mejia runs off.
“He’s acquired a gun!” an officer shouts.
“Drop the gun!” and “Stop reaching!” officers yell throughout the chase.
While the officers are operating after Mejia, one may be heard asking {that a} Taser be poised to deploy.
No civilians could possibly be seen within the video, however the foot pursuit approaches a number of companies. Mejia seems in a recording to have an object in his hand.
After a number of seconds, three officers shoot Mejia. They carried out CPR, however he died at a hospital.
“The officers perceived an energetic menace to their security,” the chief mentioned.
What precisely prompted them to fireplace is below investigation, Reed mentioned.
A recording exhibits a gun that Dorsey says police discovered on the bottom close to Mejia.
“Mejia set forth a sequence of occasions that compelled Fontana cops to guard each themselves and the group at giant”, Dorsey says.
Dorsey provides that Mejia was a documented gang member with convictions for tried homicide, home violence and kidnapping.
Family members of Mejia accused the town of repeatedly refusing to launch paperwork and recordings of the capturing to their attorneys, in accordance with a lawsuit they filed in late January.
