The police body cam footage of the Deon Kay shooting in Washington D.C. was released today and it clearly shows that Kay was not shot in the back running away as we originally heard (https://copblaster.com/blast/25947/was-deon-kay-shot-in-the-back-while-fleeing-d-c-police). What it shows is Kay running away, throwing his gun when the cop gets close, and getting shot after he no longer had a gun.
Our frame by frame analysis can be seen in the picture above. Kay was running from the officer as seen in the video below, the officer cut him off, told him to "get on the ground," Kay threw his weapon, and the officer shot him. Then a second officer is overheard saying "he tossed it down there." Obviously you can conclude that Kay was not trying to shoot anyone. He tried running away from an officer with a gun he did not want to be caught with and threw it hoping that he could keep the officer from finding the gun.
Is this a justified shooting? It is a close call because you've got a suspect armed with a gun, the suspect refuses to get on the ground when told, and the shooter obviously saw the gun. Those factors all go in the officer's favor, but there is a big difference between trying to fire a weapon and throwing a weapon. A trained police officer should be able to tell the difference. At no point did Kay point the weapon at the officer. We believe this shooting to be unjustified.
We believe that a competent officer would have at least told Kay to drop his weapon, would have recognized a toss for what it was, and not shot him after he tossed to gun.
Black Lives Matter groups have every right to be angry with this officer and the Washington D.C. Police Department over this. We do not agree with people comparing Deon Kay to Kyle Rittenhouse mainly because Rittenhouse was clearly working with the cops and had a special hand signal worked out with them that prevented them from treating him as a suspect.