Daniel Shavers: The Video Doesn't Lie

Victim Daniel Shavers with his two daughters

Over the past few years, the rapid advancements in cell phone technology have led to an explosion in the number of people walking or driving around with video camera capability in their pockets.

Video footage from camera-equipped cell phones have brought some truly shocking examples of excessive use of force and overtly biased policing based on race by some members of law enforcement.

As have body-cams that are now required by a growing number of police departments in the U.S.

Unquestionably, two of the most egregious and chilling examples of deadly police overreaction caught on video in recent memory were the deaths of Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers (pictured above).

The victims in both cases were engaged in non-violent behavior that were minor low-level infractions at best, both men were married fathers, and neither of the officers who killed them (on videotape) faced any legal repercussions for taking the life of an innocent human being.

Let's review the facts of Shavers' death.

On Monday January 18, 2016, Shavers was on his stomach (per the orders of the police training guns on him) crying and pleading for officers not to kill him moments before he was shot and killed in the hallway of a hotel in Mesa, Arizona by former police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford.

A Granbury, Texas resident who worked for a pest control business, Shavers was in Mesa to kill some birds that had gotten inside a grocery store. After inviting two female acquaintances back to his room for drinks, at some point he showed them a pellet rifle with a scope mounted on it that he was planning to use to kill the birds for his job - which he was presumably going to do at night when customers weren't around.

Hotel guests hanging out at the pool below went to the front desk to report someone waving a gun in the window of a room up on the 5th floor of the hotel, and the Mesa PD were called.

Ex-Mesa police officer Philip "Mitch" Brailsford

When a group of tactical SWAT officers arrived and went to Shavers' room, he'd been drinking but told officers he wasn't intoxicated and willingly complied with their orders.

According to a detailed analysis of the incident by former FBI supervisory agent and St. John's University adjunct professor James Gagliano that was shared with CNN on Tuesday, a review of the full unedited body-cam footage that was released after Brailsford was acquitted (more on that in a moment) revealed that the commanding officer on the scene delivered a series of confusing and contradictory commands to Shavers.

Commands interlaced with needless threats that unnecessarily aggravated a tense situation.

Now the end is tough to watch, but I really want you to watch the body-cam footage for yourself; if you haven't already seen it - it's about five minutes in total.

Listen to the commanding officer's tone of voice and the way he talks to Shavers, watch how Shavers tries to comply with every command given to him; in fact he was complying with the officer's orders to crawl towards them when Brailsford suddenly opens fire with his AR-15 assault rifle and fatally shoots Shavers IN THE BACK five times.

As James Gagliano told CNN: "In a quarter-century of participating in and leading tactical resolution operations, I have never heard a law enforcement professional use such offensive -- almost taunting -- rhetoric. the vocal police officer tasked with directing the operation appeared hell-bent on baiting a confused but receptive and compliant subject into making a deadly mistake."

Click the link above to the right of Brailsford's photo to check out the full text of Gagliano's analysis of how the Mesa PD officer's actions led to the murder of a man in cold blood.

Eric Garner being choked to death on a Staten
Island sidewalk in 2014 - for selling loose cigarettes

And I don't use that term lightly.

To me there's no way to watch that unedited body cam footage, watch a terrified Shavers comply with everything the commanding officer asks him to do, listen to that officer repeatedly and intentionally goad Shavers - and then watch Brailsford fire five shots from an AR-15 assault rifle at point blank range - and not see it as murder.

An unarmed crying man crawling on his belly is a threat? Really?

By the way, two months after Shavers was killed the Mesa police department fired Brailsford for unsatisfactory performance and violations of department policy - including the fact that he had the words "YOU'RE FUCKED" etched into his AR-15.

While Brailsford is not the commanding officer heard yelling like a maniac on the body-cam footage, he was the one who pulled the trigger as a crying Shavers crawled toward the officers as he was told to do.

Last Thursday a jury acquitted Brailsford of all charges including second-degree manslaughter and what confuses me is the fact that Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Sam Meyers granted a motion to seal the body-cam footage in spring of 2016 before the trial started.

To me the hardest part is that, like Eric Garner, Shavers is literally posing no threat whatsoever to the multiple officers who are around him - and like Garner, Shavers is pleading for his life.

It was just three years ago that Garner's death gained worldwide attention after NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo (who's still on active duty by the way) placed him in an illegal choke hold after the Staten Island father was confronted by a group of officers for selling loose cigarettes on the street.

NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo right after
choking Eric Garner on July 17, 2014

The disturbing video of Pantaleo calmly choking the life out of Garner as he repeatedly rasps, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe!" as three other officers hover over him is horrifying.

According to statements from eyewitnesses at the scene that were detailed in a recent book by journalist Matt Taibbi about Garner, his death and the failure to indict Pantaleo titled "I Can't Breathe: A Killing On Bay Street", as Garner struggled to breathe a woman ran up to Pantaleo and begged him to stop choking Garner.

He gestured to his gun and kept on choking the man.

The conduct of men like Mitch Brailsford and Daniel Pantaleo does not typify the professionalism demonstrated by thousands of law enforcement personnel who face difficult decisions every day.

But when the law is applied selectively and unevenly, whether it's a traffic stop or a chokehold, it undermines trust in the very institutions empowered to enforce those laws for the public good - and that, ironically, makes "good policing" harder for the thousands of cops who do it the right way.

Ultimately it's a sad statement of America's justice system that when the actions of men like Brailsford and Pantaleo do result in the unjustified deaths of innocent people, and municipal courts fail to hold them legally accountable for taking a human life - too often there is no remedy.

Time will tell though.

Even though Mitch Brailsford walked on second-degree manslaughter charges last week, he may very well still face federal charges for a flagrant violation of Daniel Shavers' civil rights - the same charges that resulted in former North Charleston PD officer Michael Slager being sentenced to 20 years for  fatally shooting unarmed U.S. Navy veteran Walter Scott in the back as he was running away from Slager on April 4, 2015.

Maybe that legal route will eventually lead to justice for Eric Garner and Daniel Shavers.

And some small measure of comfort for Garner's wife and their four children, and Shavers' wife and their two daughters.

After all, as I blogged about last Friday, sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly - and in the end, the video doesn't lie.