The NYPD released dramatic bodycam footage Monday showing an emotionally disturbed man being shot by cops last month after he charged at them with two…
The NYPD released dramatic bodycam footage Monday showing an emotionally disturbed man being shot by cops last month after he charged at them with two knives.
Its release marks only the second time in the department’s history that a bodycam video from a shooting was made public.
The footage shows an officer pumping a single bullet into the leg of Taris Cummings, 27, as he rushes at police inside a Manhattan apartment building Oct. 22.
A person who knows the young man had called 911 just minutes before the shooting to say he had stabbed himself in the neck and side in the attempt to take his own life.
Cummings can be seen on video going after the arriving cops — Officers Alvin Pizarro and Gino Guerra — with a pair of knives just moments after they knocked on his door.
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!,” Guerra can be heard saying.
“Put the knife down!” Pizarro adds. “Put the knife down! Put the f–king knife down!”
The 11-year NYPD veteran, who is wearing the bodycam, asks Cummings to drop the weapon one more time before eventually opening fire. The video ends seconds later.
Cummings was later taken to Saint Luke’s Hospital and treated for stab and gunshot wounds.
While the NYPD’s bodycam program was implemented back in April, it wasn’t introduced to the 30th Precinct, where Guerra and Pizarro both work, until Oct. 16 — the week before the shooting. The reason Guerra wasn’t wearing a camera is because he had just recently joined the force and rookies don’t get them.
The bodycams were rolled out as part of a court-mandated pilot program launched by the department after a federal judge ordered the initiative in 2013 following an investigation of its stop-and-frisk tactics.
Cops are ultimately required to turn on the devices when using force, making arrests or writing summonses, interacting with EDPs or criminally suspicious people, searching property or people, and while responding to crimes in progress.
