Body-worn camera footage from killing of Akron 15-year-old provides few clues to incident

A week after 15-year-old Jazmir Tucker was shot and killed by an Akron police officer, body camera footage released by the City of Akron on Thursday afternoon provides few clues about what happened on Thanksgiving night and raises questions about how officers responded.

The footage, released as required by city law, doesn’t show what Tucker was doing in his last moments alive or what officers said to him before a rifle-wielding officer opened fire from some distance away. 

The footage does show that officers waited seven minutes after the shooting to approach Tucker, who appeared motionless in the grass in front of Miller South School for the Visual and Performing Arts. Seven officers walking side by side finally reach his body. None of the officers attempted to provide first aid to the teenager and instead handcuffed him and searched for weapons. 

Officers eventually found a gun in the zipped-up pocket of his green jacket. He was not holding it when he died. 

Officers rolled the handcuffed teen’s body to its side and unzipped his jacket and sweatshirt, revealing a wound near his chest that was obscured by a blur added to the video before its release. 

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik called for the community to reserve judgment the morning after the Nov. 28 shooting, but on Thursday, after watching the video, the mayor issued his harshest criticism of Akron police officers since he was sworn in at the beginning of the year. 

“Due to the angle of the body cameras and the bright light shining on Jazmir after he was initially shot, it’s hard to make out from the videos what exactly happened leading up to the shooting and immediately following it,” Malik wrote in a statement coinciding with the release of the footage.

“A gun was recovered from Jazmir’s zipped-up jacket pocket. Given that, why did the officer decide to use his weapon?” 

The mayor also questioned why the officers did not activate their body cameras. The cameras were activated automatically when another cruiser turned on its lights, he wrote, and details leading up to the shooting were not documented.

“So my initial questions were why the cameras were not activated by the officers and whether this violated the body worn camera policy,” he wrote. “This will be reviewed in our internal investigation.”

Malik also said people may wonder why the officers used rifles instead of handguns when they responded to the incident and that it would be discussed more going forward, including in the internal investigation and “as part of the city’s comprehensive review of use of force, including when and how different weapons are used.”

The mayor’s office said it will hold a press conference on Friday alongside Police Chief Brian Harding. 

Tucker’s family members and lawyers from the Cochran Firm Ohio briefly addressed the media on Thursday night at The Remedy Church on Brittain Road but said they still needed time to process the video.

“I’m just really devastated, Jazmir was a great kid, very humorous,” said Ashley Green, Jazmir’s mother.“I just don’t know what to say.”

Green was joined by Tucker’s great-aunt, Connie Sutton. Behind the trio of his mother, great-aunt and their lawyer were four additional family members. None spoke at the press conference.

“Jazmir was my great-nephew, he was always laughing,” Sutton said. “Everybody loved Jaz, and Jaz loved everyone else. He loved to do yard work. Our family’s just devastated, we’re just hoping for prayers, looking for prayers.”

The mood at the press conference was solemn, with Jazmir’s mother visibly upset. The family’s attorney, Stanley Jackson, said the family would return  to the church Friday to take questions from the press.

“There’s a lot the family has to process tonight, and we’re going to let them have that moment to be able to be with each other and share and to process the video that we just seen,” Jackson said.