Body-cam video released by Houston police on Tuesday captured the moment in which Officer Shane Privette shot and killed 29-year-old Jalen Randle, a Black man cops said they were seeking on a warrant, on April 27.
A review of the video by The Daily Beast suggests an officer’s request to “let me see your hands” had barely escaped his lips before the fatal shot rang out.
“Oh, shit,” a voice, presumably Privette’s, intones immediately afterward.
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There is no weapon visible near Randle’s hands, and no apparent answer to a question heard immediately following the shooting: “Does he have a gun?” on body-cam video of the incident.
Doug Griffith, the president of the Houston Police Officers Union who has previously spoken on behalf of Privette, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. He previously suggested to The Daily Beast that if Randle had complied with police orders, he would still be alive.
The video was released one day before the two-year anniversary of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police. Floyd grew up in Houston.
After the shooting, the video appears to show officers cuffing and briefly dragging Randle’s limp body across the pavement before rendering aid.
“Drag him back, drag him back!” a voice could be heard saying.
According to initial police accounts, Randle was wanted for three open warrants when a vehicle he was in was stopped forcibly by a narcotics team. Police did not claim that Randle had a weapon in his hands, but a release by the department said a gun was later found inside a bag he was holding when he was shot.
Since the shooting, Randle’s mother, father, and five-year-old daughter have rallied with local advocates, civil-rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, and community members to demand the release of the video and accountability for the cop who shot him. Privette was charged with aggravated assault by a public servant in 2019 for striking a man in the face two years earlier, but a grand jury dropped the charges.
Two weeks after Randle’s death, the family legal team presented an independent autopsy they claimed showed that Randle had been shot in the back of the neck. A preliminary reference to the case from the Harris County Medical Examiner refers to a gunshot wound to the neck, but a full official autopsy has not been released.
Earlier this month, Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. slammed the silence of U.S. Sen Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the wake of Randle’s death, accusing him of driving “the environment in which it happened.”
Crump, in a statement on Tuesday, called the “brutality” of the video “extremely disturbing.”
“It is hard to believe that on the eve of the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, and from George’s hometown of Houston, we are still begging the police to stop killing us,” wrote the high-powered civil rights lawyer.
“We demand full justice for Jalen Randle and his family. This officer needs to be held accountable immediately.”
