New video shows the minutes before Milwaukee police shoot unarmed man

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MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- CBS 58 has obtained exclusive police body camera video of the minutes leading up to the shooting of an unarmed man.

Milwaukee police shot Jerry Smith, Jr. three times near 29th and Wisconsin in August 2017.

He had his hands out to the side and was lowering himself to the ground when he was shot. He’s now partially paralyzed.

Officers had been called to a fight that Smith was involved in. Some people, including Smith, ran.

Body camera footage shows an officer saying “We’re looking for two other people who have guns out here.”

Then, over a radio, a voice says “Yeah, subject has a gun, running.”

Officers proceed to search the neighborhood and more fighting and cursing can be heard in the street.

Two minutes later, they’re back in a car.

One says, “One of the f*****s dropped a knife over there. So I just dumped it in the sewer.”

Then another officer says, “It’s gonna be a shooting up over here in a minute.”

Daniel Storm, an investigator working for Smith, sees that prediction of violence as intent to shoot Smith.

The district attorney has decided not to charge any of the officers.

Two minutes after the comment about a shooting, the officers approach Smith on a rooftop, where the shooting then occurs.

Police Chief Alfonso Morales addressed it earlier this month, saying “Let the facts come out. Everyone that’s upset is upset at a few seconds that they observed on video. They’re not taking the totality of the circumstances in there. There’s two sides to the story.”

At a Fire and Police Commission meeting Thursday, we asked Morales for his response to the new footage of what led up to the shooting.

He said there’s still more the public isn’t seeing and he couldn’t comment further.

The DA’s office has declined multiple times to comment on this story.

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