Video Shows Fort Worth Police Officer Shoot Unarmed, Innocent Man in Back As He Walks Away

Dash Camera video that was released earlier today shows the shooting of a man in the back by a Fort Worth police officer in July of this year. David Collie, who survived, but was paralyzed as a result, had not committed any actual crime at the time and was completely unarmed when shot.

Prior to the release of the video, the Fort Worth Police Department had claimed Collie pulled a razor knife out of his pocket and pointed it at the two officers present during the shooting. However, they now acknowledge that a razor knife found in the area did not belong to him.

In order to justify the shooting, Collie was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant. The video pretty clearly shows that Collie was walking away from the “public servants” and also that they never got anywhere close enough to him in order for him to assault them prior to him being shot. In addition, that shooting happened just 10 seconds after the two unnamed officers, who were using taxpayer funded equipment to work side-jobs as apartment maintenance, arrived. A grand jury later refused to indict Collie for the imaginary assault.

Via TheGuardian.com:

A police dashcam video appears to show a Texas officer shooting a black man as he is walking away from the officer and not posing any immediate threat.

A lawyer for David Collie released a copy of the video showing the July encounter with a Fort Worth officer and a Tarrant County sheriff’s deputy. The officer and deputy were off duty at the time and working a security detail together at an apartment complex, attorney Nate Washington said on Wednesday.

He said Collie was shot in the back, leaving him paralyzed…

Police at the time were searching for two shirtless black men who they believed had committed a robbery near a gas station, Washington said. Authorities said in a news release they issued at the time that Collie had pulled a box cutter from his pocket and pointed it at the officers.

Collie was charged with aggravated assault on a public servant but a grand jury declined to indict him…

Collie, 33, was walking from work to a friend’s apartment when the officers approached him in the patrol vehicle, Washington said. It was the Fort Worth officer who shot Collie, Washington said, and the video appears to show the officer firing his weapon about 10 seconds after exiting the vehicle, as Collie walked away.

Collie’s lawyer, Nate Washington, says that he released the video to bring attention to a previously released videotaped incident (embedded below) in which a mother named Jacqueline Craig and two of her teenage daughters were arrested after she called the police to report a man had choked her seven year-old son. Washington stated that he released the earlier video to show that this type of behavior was not an isolated event and that “many members of our community have been assaulted, handled roughly by Fort Worth police officers.”