Video has surfaced of Dallas police officers responding? to a call last June 2014 that a mentally ill man was off his medication, and needed to be transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Jason Harrison was shot five times in front of his mother and later died.?The officers involved in the shooting — John Rogers and Andrew Hutchins — had this to say in separate affidavits posted on CNN:
The pair received a call that a bipolar, schizophrenic man was off his medications, Rogers wrote. His mother said he was being argumentative and needed to go to Parkland Memorial Hospital, he wrote.The affidavit shows that Officer Rogers arrived wearing a department-issue body camera that was not working.
“I told the suspect to put down the screwdriver so we could talk, but he refused to comply,” he said in his affidavit.
After Rogers and Hutchins repeated the command, “the suspect stepped from the doorway and suddenly jabbed the screwdriver at my partner and then seemed to lock onto me and began to move toward me jabbing the screwdriver at me in fast motions.”
He tried to step away, but a car parked in the driveway blocked his path, he?claims.
“It was at that time that I realized that I was going to die if I didn’t stop the threat in front of me and I pulled my service weapon and fired two times in self-defense,” Rogers wrote.
Hutchins’ story matches Rogers’ account — which is backed up by the video — that Jason Harrison was told repeatedly to drop the screwdriver. But Hutchins makes no mention of Jason Harrison “jabbing” the screwdriver at both officers. He writes instead that Jason Harrison “advanced toward Officer Rogers while raising the screwdriver.”
“I was in fear for Officer Rogers’ life and I was forced to draw my service weapon and fire it at the suspect until he was no longer a threat,” Hutchins wrote.
According to the affidavit, Hutchins was wearing his personal body cam during the shooting. According to The Dallas Police Department and the officers’ attorney, former state Assistant Attorney General Chris Livingston,
Livingston told CNN on Wednesday that Rogers and Hutchins are specially trained and certified to deal with mentally ill people, but that Jason Harrison left them with no options. Asked if the officers could have employed nonlethal force, he said no.
“This is a deadly force encounter. You respond to lethal force with lethal force. A Taser is a less lethal item,” he said.
To many, the video footage tells a much different story. Please be advised the content in this video is very disturbing.
Harrison’s family has recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dallas Police Department, officers John Rogers, and Andrew Hutchins. The family claims that the officers violated Harrison’s civil rights, and that they used unwarranted deadly force when they were in fact fully aware of Mr. Harrison’s mental condition.?There are some reports that indicate that police officers may have escorted Mr. Hutchins to the hospital on numerous occasions in the past — all without violent incident.
Mrs. Harrison’s agonizing cries can be heard in the video as she says:
“Oh, they killed my son! Oh, they killed my son!”
