A Dallas police officer is on indefinite administrative leave after opening fire on a mentally disabled man, The Associated Press reports.
Officer Cardan Spencer filed a police report claiming that 57-year old Bobby Gerald Bennett walked toward police with a “knife raised in an aggressive manner,” but a neighbor’s surveillance footage of the incident tells a different story.
In the video, Bennett stands with his hands raised for a few seconds, and then is shot by officer Cardan Spencer in the abdomen four times. Bennett was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on a public servant.
Bennett’s mother, Joyce Jackson, stated that she and her son had gotten in an argument earlier that day. Bennett was sitting outside to calm down and smoke a cigarette. Jackson called 911 and said her son, who is bipolar and schizophrenic, was angry and pacing the street with a knife.
When the officers arrived, he yelled, “You all are gonna need more officers than this,” according the report filed by Spencer.
Maurice Bunch, whose security camera caught the shooting, can be seen on the tape watching the act unfold. He said he saw no knife in Bennett’s hand. “They were trying to kill him,” Bunch said in an interview with BenSwann.com.
The AP reports that Bennett “was convicted of larceny, vehicle theft and forgery in the 1980s, but has no recent arrests.”
Joyce Jackson’s wants to see her son’s shooter punished, but rarely are police held accountable for their trigger happy antics, and Spencer will likely follow the trend. At least in our rapidly developing surveillance state, the police are being watched as well. Watch the video below.