Body camera video of 13-year-old shot by police to be released soon
UPDATED: SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 AT 2:10 PM
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill will review whether the shooting of a 13-year-old autistic boy by Salt Lake City Police was justified.
(Photo: KSL NewsRadio via Facebook)
SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office is expecting to receive body camera video late this week or early next week from Salt Lake City Police of the police shooting of a 13-year-old boy with autism.
Ten-day deadline for body camera video
Police protocol is to release footage of an officer-involved shooting within ten business days. The footage is of an officer-involved shooting that wounded 13-year-old Linden Cameren.
The boy’s mother, Golda Barton, says her son has both autism and Asperger’s syndrome and called police saying her son was having an “episode” and needed to go to the hospital.
She told KSL that she specifically asked for an officer trained for situations involving mental health to help because her son was having trouble. Police said they were called to a report of a “juvenile” having a “violent psychological issue” and when they arrived that Cameren ran.
“I heard the guns and the yelling and the guns, and then I sat there in my car for what felt like a long time and I was waiting for someone to walk over to me because I didn’t know what just happened,” Barton said.
“I think that’s a big step in transparency, and then following that, as these investigations unfold, we will — we will inform the public as to the findings, and we hope that this goes very swiftly,” says Brown.
DA waits for video footage
District Attorney Sim Gill says once his department receives the footage, they’ll dive into how the incident happened, why it happened and where does it fit into a timeline.
“At that time we’ll look at what they present,” he explains. “We’ll say OK, either it’s complete or here is the additional information you need to chase down. We’re trying to gather all the facts and figure out what actually happened.”
The department can request additional background if they feel the task force has provided insufficient information in a certain area.
“They [the task force] are in the stage of gathering all the facts, putting them all together and doing the follow-up interviews,” says Gill.
Listen to the podcast
KSL Newsradio hosts Dave Noriega and Debbie Dujanovic devoted nearly an hour to this topic on Monday. They spoke with Salt Lake County Attorney Sim Gill, the board president of Crisis Intervention Team Utah, Sherri Witwer, and with Paul Cassel, a professor of law at the University of Utah. You can listen to the podcast below: