ORLANDO, Fla. — A police chase in Orlando on Feb. 12 ended with a man dead and pinned under a police car.
9 investigates has spent months trying to understand how this happened and is pressing for answers to new questions raised by body camera from the incident.
Body camera video first obtained by Channel 9, shows the officer in pursuit recorded 20 minutes and 31 seconds of the chase and its aftermath, but his body camera shuts off before the officer realizes a man was pinned beneath his patrol car.
In the last minute of the body camera video, Orlando police officer Christopher Moulton is ordered back to the police car he abandoned on Indiana Street near Rio Grande Avenue.
A female K-9 officer is seen telling Moulton “There was a guy under your truck.” Moulton responds, “Under my truck?” before telling the officer he would go check.
Exactly 7 seconds after Moulton learns someone is underneath his vehicle, you can make out Moulton’s fingers in the bottom left corner of the body camera video before the video cuts off.
“Body-worn camera video is evidence. And the officers have to be very deliberate and very careful as to the reasons they’re turning on and off their body-worn camera videos,” said law enforcement expert and former Boca Raton Police Chief Andrew Scott.
Scott reviewed the Orlando Police Department’s body-worn camera policy and told Channel 9 he believes this video was prematurely deactivated.
“The policy is clearly telling the officer that before you deactivate, you have to give a reason why you’re deactivating your body-worn camera,” said Scott.
According to the department’s body-worn camera procedures, “Once the camera is activated to record it may not be deactivated until the scene is secure.”
The policy also states, “If at any point during an activation, a member has reason to deactivate the BWC prior to the final conclusion of an incident, that member will verbally state the reason for the deactivation while the BWC is still recording.”
Scott says in this case, Moulton will need to answer why that camera turned off. It’s one of many questions likely to be part of an internal investigation.
According to Scott, the fact the suspect in the chase had not yet been apprehended and that there was a person under the car, suggested the scene was not secured and that officers were still engaged in an active investigation.
According to police, this chase started because of unreadable license plates.
OPD’s chase policy says officers can chase people who’ve committed felonies, but this was a traffic infraction.
The Orlando Police Department told Channel 9, “OPD must wait for the criminal investigation to conclude before beginning the internal investigation.”
Meanwhile, the suspect being chased by Moulton, 30-year-old Dornell Bargnare, is facing a charge of vehicular homicide along with several other charges for running from officers on that day.
Florida Highway Patrol troopers said 56-year-old Gerald Neal was the bystander hit by Bargnare and then again seconds later by Moulton during the chase.
The Florida Highway Patrol told Channel 9 their investigation into the case was closed and a report along with charges were submitted to the state attorney’s office for review.
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