Man Shot By HPD Told Several Times to Drop His Knife, Police Recording Reveals
No video images were captured of the shooting聽 because an HPD officer accidentally covered the lens of the camera in the pistol grip of his stun gun.
A 37-year-old man was told several times to drop a fishing knife before he was Tasered, then fatally shot by a Honolulu Police officer, according to an audio recording captured by the stun gun and released on Tuesday.
“We don’t want nobody to get hurt,” an officer is heard on a video recording of the Sept. 27 incident in Kalihi. “Drop it,” yells another.
The recording, made by a camera in the pistol grip of the Taser, contained no images because the HPD officer accidentally covered it with his hand or when he braced it against a car.
He said the department decided to release the video after determining it didn’t “impact negatively the investigation.”
Perez is one of six men killed in officer-involved shootings since June. The audio in the deadly encounter with Perez is the first recording available during any of the police shootings.
The recording, which lasts about a minute and a half, depicts a chaotic scene as more than one officer yells at Perez to put the 7-inch knife down. The officers were called to the Dillingham Plaza parking lot after a witness said Perez had stolen something from a store.
Deputy Chief John McCarthy said there are protocols as to who should speak to an armed suspect when there is more than one officer present. But he said those protocols can change quickly. “Each case varies,” he said.
McCarthy said Perez was shot two seconds after a Taser was deployed and proved “ineffective” in stopping Perez from moving toward officers. McCarthy said he doesn’t know how many shots were fired.
HPD has not released the names of the officers involved. All are back at work, McCarthy said.
A week later, on Oct. 7, another armed suspect was fatally shot after a Taser failed to stop Tison Dinney, 39, from striking an HPD officer with a machete.
McCarthy said there could be several valid reasons the Tasers failed to successfully stop armed suspects. Sometimes the guns do not work well if the suspect is wearing thick clothing or the dart-like electrodes fail to hit the suspect .
“It is concerning but we do look at it,” McCarthy said.
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