A newly released dashcam recording shows a New Jersey police officer fatally shooting a black man whose hands were raised in the air.
The fatal encounter stems from a routine traffic stop on December 30, in which Bridgeton officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley pulled over a vehicle for running through a stop sign.
While questioning the two men, Leroy Tutt and Jerame Reid, the video shows Days suddenly shouting to his partner, “We’ve got a gun in his glove compartment!”
“Show me your fucking hands,” Days, who appears to recognize Reid as he his heard calling him by his first name, warns. “He’s reaching for something!”
As the situation intensifies, Reid can be heard telling the officers, “I’m not reaching for nothing. I ain’t got no reason to reach for nothing.” He then tells Days, “I’m getting out and getting on the ground.”
Reid gets up and exits the car with his hands raised. Then the two officers fire at least six shots, killing Reid.
“The video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person,” Walter Hudson of the civil rights group National Awareness Alliance said Wednesday.
According to records, Reid was in prison for 13 years for shooting at a state trooper when he was a teenager.
On Tuesday, the Bridgeton Police Department expressed its disappointment over the video’s release “out of respect for the family.” An investigation into the fatal shooting is being conducted.
The recording comes amid reports the Ferguson police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown will be cleared of federal civil rights charges. The August shooting sparked massive protests around the country with the chant, “Hands up, don’t shoot” serving as a symbolic call for justice in Brown’s death.
