2 Colorado Officers Who Shot Black Teen In The Back Won’t Be Charged In His Death…(video Inside)

Bodycam footage shows 19-year-old De’Von Bailey get­ting shot in the back as he ran from police. A grand jury said the offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in killing him.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A grand jury found that two Colorado police offi­cers were jus­ti­fied in killing a black teenag­er who was shot mul­ti­ple times in the back dur­ing a foot chase, the dis­trict attor­ney said Wednesday. As a result, no crim­i­nal charges will be filed against the offi­cers involved in the Aug. 3 death of De’Von Bailey in Colorado Springs, KRDO report­ed, cit­ing El Paso County District Attorney Dan May.
Bailey, 19, was shot three times in the back and once in the arm. In Colorado, dis­trict attor­neys can decide to file charges, send a case to a grand jury or deter­mine police were jus­ti­fied in a shoot­ing. “For De’Von’s fam­i­ly, the deci­sion was like a kick in the gut, but of course we are not one bit sur­prised,” fam­i­ly attor­ney Mari Newman said. “This is the exact result that the sys­tem was designed to yield when a taint­ed inves­ti­ga­tion is pre­sent­ed by a biased pros­e­cu­tor. This is pre­cise­ly why we have been call­ing for an inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor and an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion from the beginning.”

Police body cam­era footage shows offi­cers talk­ing to Bailey and anoth­er man in a neigh­bor­hood about an armed rob­bery that was report­ed near­by. One offi­cer ordered the men to keep their hands up so that anoth­er offi­cer could search them for weapons. Bailey ran as he was about to be searched and was shot after he put his hands near his waist­band. The footage shows him falling to the ground and the offi­cers run­ning up to cuff his hands behind his back.

Police said they found a gun hid­den in Bailey’s shorts. The shoot­ing “is some­thing nei­ther police offi­cers nor cit­i­zens ever want to expe­ri­ence,” Police Chief Vince Niski said in an open let­ter to the com­mu­ni­ty Wednesday. “The loss of a son, a friend, a com­mu­ni­ty mem­ber, is a dev­as­tat­ing event that impacts all of us.” He also said he “ful­ly trusts and sup­ports” the inves­tiga­tive process, not­ing that the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office looked into the death before the dis­trict attor­ney hand­ed the case to the grand jury.

Newman, who was joined by Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers in call­ing for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, said Wednesday she would pur­sue addi­tion­al legal action. “The crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, as we see time and time again, is skewed in favor of the police,” she said. This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed at the Huffingtonpost​.com.