[kellyhound]

Denton, A University of North Texas student was shocked with a taser twice and shot three times after he charged at officers with a meat cleaver and frying pan last January, body camera video shows.

Four officers were sent to Darius Tarver’s apartment building at around 3 a.m. on Jan 21 after police received multiple 911 calls from residents saying a man was acting erratically, banging on doors and shattering light fixtures in a hallway with a frying pan.

Video shows that officers tried to talk to Tarver before he approached them, and that he was warned if he didn’t comply, an officer would hit him with a Taser. Tarver walked down the stairs holding the meat cleaver and frying pan, muttering something that wasn’t audible in the video.

“One last time, drop it now, drop it,” an officer said as Tarver stood at the bottom of the stairs.

When Tarver didn’t drop the items, one officer shot his Taser and Tarver groaned out and then ran toward the officer, the video shows. The officers tried to back up and as Tarver got to the sidewalk, one officer fired a single shot from his handgun.

Tarver fell to the ground and the meat cleaver landed behind his head. One officer kicked it away as the other officers yelled at Tarver to stay down. Tarver then stood back up and an officer shocked him again with a Taser.

“There’s already been one delivery of a Taser, he’s already been shot one time, and now he’s jumping up,” Police Chief Frank Dixon said. “Things are not looking good at this point. Further in their mind, something more is going on here ... he is not physically reacting the way people normally do when they’re shot.”

After being hit with the Taser a second time, Tarver picked up the frying pan with his right hand and was shot two more times.

The officers attempted to render aid and called an ambulance.

Dixon said in January that he planned to wait to release the video footage until after a Denton County grand jury was presented with the case. However, he said rhetoric in the community and false accusations and rumors being spread at a recent city council meeting is what drove him and other city leaders to release the video on Thursday.

During the council meeting, the officers were called “murderers” and “suspects,” Dixon said.

“I can no longer stand by and allow false and inaccurate information continuing to foster in our community,” he said. “That is fostering public discourse and at this point, we’re at a tipping point and it’s very important to me ... that accurate facts are out.”

The Texas Rangers are handling the criminal investigation of the shooting, and some information has not been shared with the Denton Police Department, Dixon said. He was unable to answer if toxicology reports were returned on Tarver.

Along with the video, police released audio of two 911 calls that were made that night, including one by Tarver’s roommate.

In that call, the roommate told police that Tarver had tried to barricade himself in the apartment and that he wouldn’t let him leave. Scared, the man told police he escaped the apartment and ran away to call 911. He told dispatchers that he thought his roommate “might be on something.”

He refused to go back to the apartment until police arrived.

A nearby resident of the complex also called 911. She told police she had locked herself in a bedroom with a knife when she heard a man loudly banging on her door.

Dixon said other residents also called 911, but those calls weren’t released.

One officer was injured in the confrontation and spent a day in the hospital, Dixon said. All of the officers have returned to duty, including the officer who fired the three shots at Tarver. That officer is back on patrol, Dixon said.

Kevin Tarver, a chaplain with the McKinney Police Department, watched part of the video in February and said at a news conference that day that he believed police didn’t try to de-escalate the situation.

In the video, “my son is crying out, ‘My heavenly father’,” Tarver said. “I did not see my son attacking anyone.”

Dixon said at Thursday’s news conference that Kevin Tarver watched one of the four videos before he became upset and walked out, adding that he understands why Kevin Tarver would be upset.

Lee Merritt of Dallas, the Tarver family’s attorney, said Kevin’s son Darius Tarver was in a medical crisis at the time he was shot and killed in Denton.

“He didn’t need men with guns at that time,” Merritt said at the February press conference.

Merritt and the Tarver family asked for a thorough investigation and possible charges against officers.

“If they were poorly trained, remove them,” Merritt said, referring to the officers.

Darius Tarver, 23, was a UNT senior. He worked two jobs and was to graduate in May with a degree in criminal justice, his father has said.

Kevin Tarver said his son was on the dean’s list, had numerous friends, and a scholarship has been named in his honor.

“He was never a threat,” his father said. “Only by appearance.”

Kevin Tarver said he believes the police officers’ training “went out the window.”

Darius Tarver’s roommate said Tarver was in a car wreck about a week before the shooting and that his behavior had “become erratic.”

Before the shooting, another one of their roommates woke up and saw that Darius Tarver had barricaded a hallway in their apartment with furniture, Kenton Nelson said. Tarver also covered up windows with blankets and clothes, and unplugged light fixtures because he said he didn’t want there to be any light. Then he went outside the apartment and started banging on doors and breaking lights in a hallway, Nelson said.

Another roommate told police about that when he called at around 3 a.m. to report Tarver.

The behavior by Darius Tarver was not normal, his roommate said.

“He went from normal, ‘Hey, how you doing,’ to just everywhere, to just all over the place, eyes large and so forth, just not functional,” Nelson told the Denton Record-Chronicle. “Up until last weekend, very coherent, real good guy. He’d cook for you, come check on you, see if you need anything. Worked hard, worked two jobs and then ... last weekend something occurred and changed all that.”

Dixon said the officers’ actions will be judged based on what they knew before and during the confrontation, not what they learned after.

The roommate didn’t mention the wreck or Tarver’s mental state being different to dispatchers.

“These were not the calls of someone simply asking for help,” Dixon said.

Dixon said at a news conference on Jan. 21, the day of the shooting, that officers followed their training and tried to de-escalate the situation and resolve it peacefully.

“I want to stress to you that officers every day come to work in this profession hoping to get home, but more importantly hoping that everybody they interact with get home as well, and I think that played out in this occasion,” Dixon said.

The officer who shot Tarver is a six-year veteran of the department, and the officer who was injured is new to Denton but has more than 10 years of previous law enforcement experience, police said. Their names haven’t been released.

[rhubarb_king]

He had every chance and he blew it.

[ptorico60]

A butcher knife is a bad choice when facing LE, the odds are high that you will be shot.

[Illusion]

He was a good boy. He was just trying to make the officers something to eat. /s

[pokerplay]

Take out the papers and the trash....or you gone get shot right in yo ass... yakkaty pop

[docfr8]

Dumbass should have complied to the officers commands.. You get what you get

[Splay]

I love how they always show a picture of the asshole looking like Carlton Banks on his way to choir practice.

[Steve]

Uncalled for, all he wanted to do was cook the cops some fackin eggs.

[soja]

Yeah, def a legal kill, that is what happens when you don't listen to police commands when they got their guns pointed at you, doesn't matter what your mental state might be. You prob gonna be shot if you don't do what they say.

I can totally understand the perp's dad's point of view tho. Why did those 4 officers not immediately jump in to tackle the guy after he went down the first time and they identified the knife behind his head and kicked it away? I know it is easy for me to say cuz I was not there, and those cops were probably scared, but come on, they looked like 4 big boys and it seemed obvious the guy was having a mental episode and unable/unwilling to understand any commands and that he had to be restrained ASAP, so I just don't get why all the cops seemed to keep him in their cross-hairs until he eventually forced them to pull the trigger.

Cops are trained in hand to hand combat too, right? And 4 against 1 with a guy who at most is armed with a blunt frying pan.. Really couldn't just dog pile the guy and place him under arrest?

I would not be happy with the cops if I was this guy's dad, but the cops acted reasonably within their training. I just think they probably could have done more to save the guy instead of letting the situation escalate to where they were forced to shoot.

[guims79]

English is not my native langage.
What's difficult to understand to an young black american person in "drop it now" and "stay down" ?