Newly released video showing an Ohio police officer repeatedly shooting a man who was most likely unarmed 25 seconds after he arrived on the scene has sparked an investigation.
The man was shot after 9 p.m. Nov. 11 following reports about a fight in a parking lot outside a bar in Akron.
Despite reports that the man had a gun, Akron Mayor Shammas Malik said in a statement Wednesday, “It is our current understanding he did not have a gun on his person at the time.”
Body-worn camera video released Wednesday shows the as-yet-unidentified officer shouting and swearing at the man and commanding him to show his hands and get on the floor. “Get the f--k on the ground now or you’re gonna get shot,” the officer says.
Less than 25 seconds after his arrival, the officer fires more than a dozen shots at the man, who falls to the floor. The officer continues to demand that the man remove his hands from his pockets, “or you’re gonna get shot again.”
Asked where the gun is as he is being handcuffed, the man tells the officer: “I never had a gun.”
Officers then remove the man’s shirt, revealing multiple gunshot wounds.
NBC affiliate WKYC of Cleveland reported that the man is Corey Phillips, 36, citing a family member, and that as of Sunday night he was alive but in critical condition in intensive care.
Signal Akron, a media partner of WKYC, said Phillips had undergone several operations, citing an occasional employer.
Akron police released a recording of a 911 call before the shooting in which a bartender said that they and several others had locked themselves inside the bar and that a man was armed with a “black 9mm” gun and had tried to shoot through a window. The caller said the man came into the bar earlier and was “acting very strange” and was asked to leave.
Malik, the mayor, said in a statement that while an investigation will determine whether the man did have a gun, it appears he did not at the time of the shooting. “I recognize how difficult and confusing this could be for many in our community, and I feel the weight of those concerns,” he said.
Malik added that he was already carrying out a “comprehensive review” of the Akron Police Department’s use-of-force policies.
“We can’t control every factor in volatile, high-risk situations. But we can control how we prepare our officers, how we train them, and how we equip them to de-escalate, make sound decisions under pressure and return home safely,” he said.
Police said Nov. 12 that “according to witnesses, there was an intoxicated man in the parking lot armed with a gun.”
The officer who fired the shots had been in police service for four years and with Akron Police Department for one, the force said. He has been placed on paid administrative leave, under police department rules.
The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is investigating, and its file will be submitted to the state attorney general’s office and then the Summit County grand jury.
Ohio’s Office of Professional Standards and Accountability is conducting a separate internal investigation.
The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge # 7, a union that represents officers in Akron, said officers “encountered an uncooperative individual and were forced to make a split-second decision to ensure their own safety and that of the community.”
The union referred to “initial reports from citizens” that said the man was armed.
The incident comes more than a year after Akron police officers shot and killed a man who was suspected of stealing a U-Haul truck. Michael Jones, 54, was shot as officers tried to arrest him while he sat in the driver’s seat of the truck at a gas station.
