Former Army officer, West Point&Duke grad shot by police

Originally Posted by M4arc

However, I did have one thought while typing this reply: what if Costco is dragging their feet on the video because it will make them, the manager and store employees look bad???

The hard drive that has the video on it is in CA being analyzed per the police and media.

You'd think if it was such a clear cut, clean shoot as the PD announced, that this would be cut and dry.

During the chief's radio interview, he sure as heck would not commit to saying (like the PD had earlier announced) that Erik Scott pointed a pistol at the officers. All he would say is that the officers felt threatened.

Latest news report (I have a Google news report set up that notifies me immediately anything hits the net): http://www.ktnv.com/Global/story.asp?S=12920574

Las Vegas, NV-Audio recordings released on You Tube give us a glimpse into what happened before Erik Scott was killed by police inside a Summerlin Costco. The recordings are of Metro officers communicating with dispatch operators. But the scanner audio is adding to the frustration of Erik Scott's family members, who say it paints an incomplete picture of what they believe happened on July 1oth.

According to Ross Goodman, the attorney representing the Scott family, the radio scanner recordings are full of gaps and what they really need to see and hear is what has not been produced so far; the surveillance tape and official 911 calls.

"The male inside the business is acting erratic. Throwing merchandise around…possibly high on an unknown 446 (narcotics).

Goodman, says these recordings fail to prove whether the officers were justified in opening fire that day.

"Until we get the video that confirms that Erik was not acting erratic in Costco and that he did not pull a weapon outside of Costco, that's all we need to put to rest this case," he added.

Surveillance video that would reveal exactly what led up to the shooting. But according metro, the tapes had a glitch and sent the hard drives to be analyzed.

"It's been three weeks. We are demanding answers to the status of the video, the condition of the video and the location of the video," said Goodman.

Some of Scott's relatives who had a chance to listen to the audio recordings say certain things don't add up, referring to this exchange in the scanner audio.

"If we could get the management and employees to start slowly evacuating people out of the business without alerting everyone that would be a great idea," said an officer.

But Kevin Scott, Erik's brother, says, "Eye witnesses calling to help us say that it's absurd, how they walked out next to him and the next thing they know is that they're in danger because they're shooting at the guy next to them."

Because the coroner's inquest has been postponed, it's still unclear when those key pieces of evidence will be released. Metro has said that the surveillance tapes are still being reviewed in a lab in southern California.

I saw a transcript of the radio traffic from that day and things seem to have gone pretty smooth on the commo front IMO

I will yield to your intepretation then.

If you're referring to the transcript posted earlier in this thread however, I heard some things on the recording that I don't recall reading in the transcript. If you've read another transcript, I'll deferr to that aswell.

Originally Posted by Littlelebowski

You'd think if it was such a clear cut, clean shoot as the PD announced, that this would be cut and dry.

During the chief's radio interview, he sure as heck would not commit to saying (like the PD had earlier announced) that Erik Scott pointed a pistol at the officers. All he would say is that the officers felt threatened.

I think you're right if common sense folks like us are invovled but once the city's lawyers get involved along with a pending civil lawsuit from Mr. Scott's family NOTHING is cut and dry. Every word and gester will be taken into account.

Originally Posted by M4arc

But as I said earlier I’m not an LEO so maybe I should step aside and let them answer (if they want to).

Again, I have NO info about this case, but I am in the habit of doing my own thinking. I have never heard a dispatcher embellish the info that the Reporting Party gave them. What I have experienced is the RP embellishing the story to raise the priority level of the call. I am in the habit of taking what RP's say with a grain of salt.

As far as any recordings, I believe most dispatchers like being recorded because in 99% of the time, it exonerates them of any misconduct. They just relay what the RP tells them.

I had a case a couple of years ago that we took to trial. Part of our evidence was exterior surveillance video, recorded to a hard drive at an adjoining business, one camera from which panned repeatedly across our target vehicle. Another case I worked, we did live video surveillance of a target moving through/past various areas where he had to cross under or by over 40 institutional digital video cameras.

This is what I learned about surveillance videos.

The more cameras feeding the system, the smaller the captured aspect ratio of each camera. a 320x480 digital video image from a camera 1-200 feet away is going to supply some pretty unspectacular images; grainy and muddy, color sometimes is worse than black and white.

Many digital cameras shoot time-lapsed video, essentially a series of screen shots, that is why those bank robbery videos you see on the news are stop-motion like a 100 year old movie.

Angles are never right, cameras are always obstructed by something, sunlight, a tree branch, a parked truck, you name it, it impacts what the lens sees. Cameras are never aimed where you needed them after the fact, or at the right angle. Wide angle cameras are awful, zoom cameras never zoom enough.

Camera systems are installed, and never maintained until the system quits. Cameras, especially digital cameras need to be checked regularly. Hard drives? You want to find the one HD in a business that is full of bad sectors and never maintained? It is the one servicing the video security system.

There may well have been four cameras outside the shoot site and one on the aisle but that doesn't mean they were aimed at the incident. Store security cameras are aimed to cover points of ingress/egress from a loss prevention standpoint, they want to see people leave and where they go.

When we did the 40 plus camera caper, there were two of us monitoring the suspect and even with all of the cameras there were still huge gaps in coverage. Where one camera ends, another doesn't necessarily pick it right up. When doing live tracking, panning the camera as fast as a target moves and slaving up the next camera is a very difficult task. You need to know where the cameras are next and where they are aimed, your control board can only work one camera at a time. That is why it takes two operators, each leap-frogging cameras; I control A, the other guy B, I switch to C, he to D and so on.

Video enhancement? What you see on CSI is complete bullshit. I wouldn't have high expectations of the store video from any of the cameras based on my experience with business video; don't hold your collective breath waiting for the "smoking gun" of this incident to have been captured on tape.

Shot five times in the back out of seven? Think about it, maybe the cover officers saw something the contact officer didn't, positioning is a fluid thing, especially if the contactee is on the move. Simply put, contact watches eyes, cover watches hands. How many of you train just to fire once? You fire till the threat is abated. Three officers? That statistically is three, three, and two shots or two, two, and four respectively. Sounds not a whole lot unlike some of the drills many of you shoot, doesn't it? If a hand goes to a holster, for whatever reason on someone you know to be armed, how long do you wait to take action? Graple with a person you know to be armed? Not on my shift. It is really easy now to sit and second guess over minutes, hours, and days what these officers had to decide in a split second. Finally, how many of the armchair QB's in this thread have ever gone up and made contact with a known armed threat? Me, I'm holding judgement, there isn't anywhere near enough info out there for me to decide any kind of fault on this matter yet.

Originally Posted by kmrtnsn

This is what I learned about surveillance videos.

The more cameras feeding the system, the smaller the captured aspect ratio of each camera. a 320x480 digital video image from a camera 1-200 feet away is going to supply some pretty unspectacular images; grainy and muddy, color sometimes is worse than black and white.

Many digital cameras shoot time-lapsed video, essentially a series of screen shots, that is why those bank robbery videos you see on the news are stop-motion like a 100 year old movie.

Angles are never right, cameras are always obstructed by something, sunlight, a tree branch, a parked truck, you name it, it impacts what the lens sees. Cameras are never aimed where you needed them after the fact, or at the right angle. Wide angle cameras are awful, zoom cameras never zoom enough.

Camera systems are installed, and never maintained until the system quits. Cameras, especially digital cameras need to be checked regularly. Hard drives? You want to find the one HD in a business that is full of bad sectors and never maintained? It is the one servicing the video security system.

There may well have been four cameras outside the shoot site and one on the aisle but that doesn't mean they were aimed at the incident. Store security cameras are aimed to cover points of ingress/egress from a loss prevention standpoint, they want to see people leave and where they go.

All of this, folks. I've been in charge of camera systems and this is the absolute God's-honest truth. I detailed some of the problems I've experienced earlier in this thread.

Setting up security cameras is about choices and compromises. In one facility, for instance, we had really high quality pics snapped at the rate of 4 per second on the entrance primarily so we could have a clear identifying picture of the person entering, and then the other cameras were used to track the individual's movement through the area. The other cameras were set to lower quality with a lower frame rate because the hard drives in these things are only so big and you can only store so much data. If every camera was dialed up to the maximum frame rate and maximum quality the hard drive would get full and recycle itself every couple of days...which would destroy evidence before you even knew it was necessary in many instances. That all assumes, of course, that the cameras you buy have the capability of taking good pictures. When I was responsible for purchasing a system I did something that stunned the camera system salesmen...I actually asked to look at the video quality yielded by different cameras before making a purchase.

"Nobody has ever asked us that before."

I went with option A which had cameras that took really good pictures even though they didn't do neat swoopy stuff like pan. When I submitted the proposal I spent the next 4 days explaining why options B through Q weren't acceptable to the people higher in the food chain.

"But this system costs $3,000 dollars less on MSRP and they're running a sale that cuts the price in half!"

Yes, sir, it costs $3,000 dollars less because the cameras for that system take pictures that suck, meaning that we'd have absolutely zero chance of producing a clearly identifying image of anyone who committed a criminal act in our facility. It's on sale because nobody wants to buy the damn thing. They don't want to buy the damn thing because in the end you're still spending X thousand dollars on a camera system, only you're buying one that won't do beans for you when it comes to a prosecution. Eventually they relented and bought option A...and not two weeks after installation it captured a multiple felon stealing from the facility. After his arrest he was playing the hard role...until they showed him the video. It identified him clearly and showed exactly what he did...and he copped to the charges right then and there.

Generally problems with the camera system aren't noticed until you need the system...and then when you go to look at the video you see that some jackass moved one of the cameras so it now has a magnificent view of a concrete block wall and nothing else. Or you discover that the camera's network card has crapped the bed and you can't recover video from it, or a critter crawled in the brain of the camera system and started chewing on wires (had that happen too) destroying the hard drive cable, etc.

Originally Posted by kmrtnsn

I had a case a couple of years ago that we took to trial. Part of our evidence was exterior surveillance video, recorded to a hard drive at an adjoining business, one camera from which panned repeatedly across our target vehicle. Another case I worked, we did live video surveillance of a target moving through/past various areas where he had to cross under or by over 40 institutional digital video cameras. This is what I learned about surveillance videos...

Outstanding post.

Just received this via email. My reason for posting is that there are several Las Vegas area members of M4C if they'd like to attend.

Subject: Candle Light Vigil for Erik Tues 8-10-10 at 9pm PST at the Summerlin Costco


On the 30 day mark of Erik's untimely death, or next Tuesday August 10th we are planning a candle light vigil at the Summerlin Costco. The event will begin at 9pm and we are hoping as many people as possible will attend so please spread the word within your network(s). Please bring a candle and show your continued support by keeping this tragedy alive in the eyes of the Las Vegas community.

For those that can't make the event, Erik's friends and family are asking that you please post the candlelight image (which is located in the Picture section of the In Memory of Erik Scott Group) as your profile image and/or within your Facebook home page "news feed".

For Erik,
Mike Pusateri