A video showing a San Diego police officer gunning down a homeless man suspected of carrying a knife last April – which turned out to be a pen – was released this week, showing Fridoon Rawshan Nehad did not charge at the officer when he was shot as initially reported.
And further evidence released today shows that San Diego police officer Neal Browder told fellow officers hours after the shooting that he did not see a weapon.
But then days later – after he was allowed to watch the video – he changed his story to say, “He was going to stab me. There’s no doubt in my mind that he was going to stab me,” according to NBC San Diego.
The April 30 video shows Browder parking his cruiser in an alleyway, asking a dispatcher for Nehad’s description.
Nehad then comes strolling into the frame, walking towards Browder’s car before the officers shoots him. A lawsuit filed by Nehad’s family in August says he was 15 feet from the officer when shot. The video seems to support that claim.
The surveillance video also shows Browder waited about eight seconds after identifying Nehad before shooting and killing him.
Despite the considerable distance between Browder and Nehad, Dumanis’ investigation ruled the shooting justified last month.
Browder said he felt threatened because he thought Nehad had threatened him with a knife, even though the knife turned out to be a pen.
Although the video only went public this week, Browder was allowed to watch it after the shooting before providing an official statement to his superiors.
And that led him to change his initial story, according to evidence released today by lawyers representing Nehad’s family, reports the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Just hours after the fatal shooting of Fridoon Nehad in an alley in the Midway district, San Diego Police Officer Neal Browder told investigators he did not see any weapons on Nehad, according to an official police statement released Wednesday.
Then, five days later, Browder told detectives in a formal, tape-recorded interview that when he first saw Nehad he spotted a “metal object” in his hand, and believed that it was a knife. He said in the interview that Nehad kept advancing — “aggressing my car,” as he put it, and he believed he was about to be stabbed.
Those details were not part of the evidence released by Dumanis during Tuesday’s press conference, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
“I think that no person in the world, in the entire universe, can see that video and come to the conclusion that my brother was attacking a police officer,” Nehad’s sister, Benazeer Roshan, told Voice of San Diego.
‘That’s the bottom line. You have to basically have a really good imagination to think that my brother was going to fly at you when he’s walking at a normal pace and he just gets shot down.”
Dunmanis claimed that the video supported Browder’s story because Nehad was walking towards him in the short seconds before Browder opened fire.
Dumanis pointed out that the video was recorded from more than 20 feet in the air and was more than 70 feet from where Browder was, which incidentally is about how far up the police department’s collective rear end Dunmanis’s head is buried.
The shocking part of the video and lack of prosecution is that it just isn’t shocking. A badge is a license to kill… even if there’s a camera rolling and the victim has no weapon.
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