Berkley Police released video footage of a July shoplifting-turned-robbery outside a drug store where an officer fired her service weapon at a fleeing vehicle.
In earlier statements, police said the shooting happened outside the CVS Pharmacy, 1451 Shattuck Ave., with an officer encountering three suspects who had been involved in a shoplifting and used force on employees who tried to stop them.
Police then said the suspects were in a blue four-door Ford Fusion crossover-sport utility vehicle and began driving toward the officer, who fired her weapon at least twice in self-defense before it fled the scene. Police added that the officer was treated and released at a hospital after injuring her foot, but did not say how the injury happened.
In a video posted to social media and described as a community briefing Monday, police said the officer, identified as Cheri Miller, was at the curb of a nearby Safeway grocery store when she heard CVS employees confronting the suspects in the parking lot, called for cover and drove to the lot, parking behind the vehicle.
The video begins with audio of a police dispatcher and officers coordinating their response to the scene ending with Miller saying, “Shots fired, suspects fleeing,” followed by in-store surveillance-camera footage of the suspects rushing a loaded cart out of the store’s front door, followed seconds later by several employees. It then switches to cell-phone video from a parking-lot witness of employees struggling with the suspects, who fight them off before flinching at the sound of an approaching siren.
When the officer arrives seconds later, the video shows her parking behind the car, yelling “Let me see your hands now” at the driver and walking up to the vehicle on foot to the driver, identified as Brandon Owens, 19, of Concord. Owens is seen initially complying before wandering toward the car’s trunk to retrieve car keys, and then complies after Miller tells him to get into the car.
Owens is seen ignoring Miller’s repeated commands to put his keys on top of the car, as well as a passenger’s cries to turn the car off, and starts the car and slowly backs his vehicle up before accelerating just inches away from Miller, whose gun goes off at least twice.
The video ends with footage from Miller’s own body-worn camera, which begins in silence before the audio starts with Miller ordering Owens to stay in the car, followed by Owens’ starting the car and ending with Miller’s broadcast… East Bay Times
