Videos of fatal officer-involved Milwaukee shooting being held

Body camera footage of a fatal police shooting that sparked unrest in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood will not be released until the Milwaukee County district attorney makes a charging decision, Attorney General Brad Schimel said Monday.

The state is investigating the August 13 shooting of 23-year-old Sylville Smith.

Both Smith and the officer who shot him were African-American and both lived in the surrounding community, where the shooting set off two nights of protests and rioting.

Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn said last week after the shooting that the video shows Smith holding a handgun and turning toward the officers during the encounter.

Schimel said releasing the two body cam videos of the shooting “would compromise the integrity of the investigation”, adding, “It is sometimes necessary to confront witnesses with information they didn’t know or they didn’t know we know”.

Three officers were on the scene quickly and two of them were wearing body cameras; those officers have not viewed any of the footage, he said.

“Milwaukee PD has about 2,000 sworn officers as I understand”.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has urged state officials to release video of the shooting as soon as possible in hopes that it would back up the police department’s account and show that the shooting was justified. There is also 30-second delay before audio starts on the recordings because of a setting on the devices.

He went on to say the family is being fully cooperative with the investigation but have expressed some distrust over the system.

‘The body camera video is just one piece of information among many sources of information, ‘ Schimel told reporters.

Still, it was seen as controversial by some because of a state law that forbids officers working in the same jurisdiction where an officer-involved shooting occurs to investigate their fellow officers.

“In the end, the public needs to have confidence that the process was an effective search for the truth”, Schimel said. Doing so may result in civil and/or criminal penalties.