The New York Police Department has released the body camera footage for the first time of a fatal shooting of a man they were doing a wellness check on.
According to the New York Daily News, Miguel Richards' landlord called the police Sept. 6 to have them check on the young man. When officers arrived, the video shows Richards standing at the foot of his bed wearing sunglasses and holding a knife while his right hand was behind his back.
ABC7 News revealed the video in which officers can be overheard telling Richards to drop the knife. BuzzFeed counted 44 times they requested he drop the weapon.
"I don't want to shoot you, but I will if you don't drop that knife," the officer can be heard saying.
Richards then appears to raise his right hand holding the fake gun and an officer fired his stun gun. The other officers open fired with their actual guns and Richards was dead.
Richards' father attacked the NYPD last week, calling the crime a murder.
"He was murdered, cold bloodedly," Belvett Richards said of his 31-year-old son. "He didn't deserve to die this way."
In total, the department released seven videos as well as a 17-minute compilation of all of the videos.
"The officers noticed what appeared to be a gun in his right hand," Chief of Patrol Carlos Gomez said last week. "The officers asked the male if the gun was real and ordered him to drop it, explaining, 'We don't wanna hurt you.' As the subject raised the gun in the direction of the officers, one officer fired his Taser as the two other officers fired their service weapons, striking the subject several times."
The body cam footage is part of a new pilot project for the NYPD's attempts at transparency.
Watch below:
