The Mesa Police Department has released the full body camera video. Photo / Supplied
The Mesa Police Department has released the full body camera video. Photo / Supplied
After the police officer involved was acquitted of second-degree murder charges, officials in Arizona released graphic video showing Daniel Shaver crawling on his hands and knees and begging for his life in the moments before he was shot and killed in January 2016.
Shaver was one of at least 963 fatal police shootings in 2016, according to a Washington Post database.
And Shaver's death was one of an increasing number of fatal police shootings to prompt criminal charges in the years since the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, following the death of Michael Brown. Yet charges remain rare, and convictions even more so.
Daniel Shaver with his daughters. Shaver was shot by Arizona police officer Philip Brailsford in 2016. Photo / GoFundMe
The shooting, by then-Mesa police department officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford, occurred after officers responded to a call about a man allegedly pointing a rifle out of a fifth-floor window at a La Quinta Inn, reports The Washington Post.
Inside the room, Shaver, 26, had been doing rum shots with a woman he'd met earlier that day and showing off a pellet gun he used for his job in pest control.
The graphic video, recorded by Brailsford's body camera, shows Shaver and the woman exiting the hotel room and immediately complying with the officer's demand that they lay down on the ground.
Shaver immediately puts his hands in the air and lays down on the ground while informing the officer that no one else was in the hotel room.
"If you make a mistake, another mistake, there is a very severe possibility that you're both going to get shot. Do you understand?" Brailsford said, before telling Shaver to "shut up."
"I'm not here to be tactical and diplomatic with you. You listen. You obey," Brailsford says.
For the next five minutes, Brailsford gives Shaver a series of instructions. First, the officer demands that Shaver put both of his hands on top of his head, next he instructs him to cross his left foot over his right foot.
Philip Brailsford the Mesa police officer who shot and killed unarmed father of two Daniel Shaver. Photo / Mesa Police Department
"If you move, we're going to consider that a threat and we are going to deal with it and you may not survive it," Brailsford said.
The officer then had the woman crawl down the hallway where she was taken into custody. Shaver remained on the ground in the hallway, his hands on his head.
The officer tells Shaver to keep his legs crossed and push himself up into a kneeling position. As Shaver pushes himself up, his legs come uncrossed, prompting the officer to scream at him.
"I'm sorry," Shaver says, placing his hands near his waist, prompting another round of screaming.
"You do that again we're shooting you, do you understand?" Brailsford yells.
"Please do not shoot me," Shaver begs, his hands up straight in the air.
At the officers' command, Shaver then crawls down the hallway sobbing. At one point, he reaches back - possibly to pull up his shorts - and Brailsford opens fire, striking Shaver five times.
According to the police report, Brailsford was carrying an AR-15 rifle, with the phrase "You're F-ked" etched into the weapon. The police report also said the "shots were fired so rapidly that in watching the video at regular speed, one cannot count them."
Brailsford testified in court that he believed Shaver was reaching for a gun. No gun was found on Shaver's body. Two pellet rifles used for Shaver's pest-control job were later found in the hotel room.
Brailsford's attorney, Mike Piccarreta, told The Post in a previous interview that he thinks the body camera footage clears his client.
"It demonstrates that the officer had to make a split-second decision when [Shaver] moved his hands toward the small of his back after being advised that if he did, he'd be shot," Piccarreta told The Post in 2016.
Piccarreta also said he wasn't sure his client would be interested in trying to get his police job back.
Shaver's widow and parents have filed wrongful-death lawsuits against the city of Mesa.
