The police account of what happened on the night a Birmingham officer shot and killed a man nearly five years ago appears to conflict with newly released body camera footage made public through a $4.5 million federal lawsuit.
The footage shows Birmingham police officer Aric Mitchell fire four shots into the driver side window of a Toyota Camry on the night of June 15, 2019. The shooting killed the driver Jamarcus Moore and injured passenger Samantha Hardin, who are both Black.
Officer Mitchell, who is also Black, said in a recorded interview with an internal affairs investigator, that he shot and killed Moore because he saw him reaching for a gun on the floorboard as they struggled through the driver side window. The gunfire also hit Hardin and broke her leg.
The video appears to show Mitchell get out of his patrol car and immediately fire four shots at the vehicle from several feet away.
“What he said happened, as opposed to what actually happened, was glaringly inconsistent,” said Johnathan Austin, an attorney for Moore’s family and Hardin. “It was just a blatant lie.”
Mitchell still works for the city as a patrol officer.
A federal jury watched the videos and reviewed other evidence during a four-day trial and decided on Feb. 1 that the city and Mitchell owe nearly $4.5 million to Hardin and Moore’s family for the use of excessive force.
Rick Journey, spokesperson for Birmingham, said the city plans to appeal the case. The deadline to file any motions is Thursday, per court records.
AL.com obtained Officer Mitchell’s body cam footage and another officer’s body and dash cam footage through a public records request in federal court last week. Lawyers for Birmingham and for Mitchell filed an emergency request to keep the recordings secret.
But U.S. District Judge Anna M. Manasco said the public has a right to see the videos.
“They are part of the public record in this case and are not and have never been sealed,” Judge Manasco wrote in an order on Friday.
In response, city attorneys withdrew the request.
The city did not respond to questions from AL.com for this article but instead provided an edited version of police footage, which they say shows someone in the Camry firing a gun during a chase along Interstate 59/20, southbound. The audio and images in the video do not clearly depict what happened. The city said that popping sounds heard on the video are gunfire.
AL.com obtained and reviewed camera footage from two police officers, as well as Moore’s autopsy report, depositions and affidavits filed by three officers and Hardin, and other documents filed in court records. The court also released the recording of Mitchell’s internal affairs investigation interview.
Mitchell said the ordeal began when he was patrolling in Ensley just before midnight on June 15, 2019. In that internal affairs interview, he said he smelled marijuana. He suspected the scent might be coming from a passing Toyota Camry.
“When I came out the alley at the intersection, I noticed, I think, a blue SUV and a gold Toyota come by me,” he said. “As we was traveling, I smelled marijuana in the area, which was not unusual being in that area.”
He said the smell got stronger once the SUV pulled away, so he assumed it was coming from the Camry.
“I noticed the driver kept looking back at me, looking out the windows. He cut his dome light on, looking around, making real overt movements,” he said in the interview. “That got my suspicions going.”
The city on Friday instead said Mitchell attempted to stop the Camry for a tag violation. Moore drove off.
Mitchell turned on his body camera. In the video, his patrol car lights and sirens come on and he asks a dispatcher to run the tag on the Camry. Mitchell tried to pull him over, but said that the Camry drove off.
The footage shows a 20-minute chase that wound through Birmingham, Bessemer and into Hueytown. A report filed by Alabama Law Enforcement Agency says that as police chased the Camry along the interstate, someone fired gunshots from the passenger window, not at police but at other cars traveling on the highway. The report also notes that no one ever came forward to report being shot at and that police never identified or found the people allegedly fired on.
“Flashes of light, consistent with that of muzzle flash, appeared to have been recorded via video recordings from in-car cameras of BPD police vehicles regarding gunshots fired by an occupant of the Toyota Camry,” says the state report from August 2019.
“Although the gunfire from the Toyota Camry had been heard and reported by multiple BPD officers…” the report reads, “no information was found to exist or show that any person had seen or could identify (eyewitness) which occupant of the Toyota Camry (Moore or Hardin) had fired the gunshots.”
Birmingham Police Officers Michaela Hood and Shantara Foster said in signed sworn statements to the court that they heard gunfire during the pursuit.
“Radio, I think he’s shooting, I think he’s shooting,” Hood says in her bodycam video.
Other officers start repeating the report of shots fired over the radio and Mitchell calls for backup.
According to time stamps on the video, the chase went on for about six more minutes after that report of gunfire before Officer Mitchell’s patrol car crashed into the Camry.
Within seconds of colliding with the Camry, Mitchell started shooting at Moore and Hardin, the video shows.
“The officer just ran up to the driver side of the car where Jamarcus was sitting and started shooting. I was shocked and terrified. I was just sitting there in shock,” Hardin said in her affidavit, adding that the officer did not give a warning. “Jamarcus was just sitting there too. We were not moving or attempting leave.”
In his interview with internal affairs, Mitchell said he approached the driver side. He said that Moore was trying to start the car again, so he reached into the car through the window and tried to pull Moore toward it and to get the door open.
“As I’m pulling on him towards the window, he’s, with his left hand, he’s reached down, he’s reaching down between the steering column and the floorboard,” Mitchell said. “I noticed the handgun that was on the floor, and he actually reached over the gun and was, you know, feeling, moving his hand back toward it.”
“That’s when I let him go, drew my weapon and discharged my gun,” he added.
The video footage shows Mitchell shoot first and approach the window after, as Moore is slumped in his seat.
Officer Hood said in a sworn statement in court records that she heard Mitchell tell Moore and Hardin to put their hands up before shooting. But the video does not appear to show Mitchell giving any warning.
And the autopsy noted “no evidence of close range fire was seen.”
After shooting into the vehicle, Mitchell walked away from the car and called for medics on his radio, per the bodycam video. “I got one shot, I got two shot,” he said.
Then, Hood’s body camera footage shows her approaching the Camry. Another officer opens the driver side door, and Moore falls to the left, still buckled into his seat. Officers pull him onto the ground. A woman, believed to be Hardin, can be heard on the video, screaming, crying, and saying, “my leg” and “please.” The video shows Hood walk away.
Someone on her radio says, “They’re running on foot.”
“They’re not on foot,” Hood responds. “Shots fired. Start the medics.”
Police reported finding a gun on the driver side floorboard of the Toyota Camry, according to the state investigation and autopsy reports. The state police report said that the gun, a Taurus TH9C pistol, had the capacity for 18 bullets, but only 14 bullets were in the magazine. But Hardin, the passenger, and her lawyers said neither her nor Moore ever fired shots.
The autopsy report found no gunshot residue on Moore’s clothes or arms.
That night, police first told news reporters that officers twice exchanged gunfire with the people inside the Camry, once as they chased the car along Interstate 59/20 and again after the chase ended when an officer’s patrol vehicle crashed into the car. Police, in statements to the press and in interviews, described a shootout.
In his interview with internal affairs two months after the shooting, Officer Mitchell said he was three or four car lengths behind the Toyota Camry, behind two other officers, when he reported gunfire from the car.
“He just start shooting, just start shooting,” he told internal affairs investigators.
Per the autopsy report, the bullets struck Moore’s heart and lungs, as well as his right forearm. The window on the driver side of the car was shattered, and a bullet hole was identified on the top center of the drivers’ door.
In 2020, long before a federal jury watched the footage, the Birmingham Police Department decided the shooting complied with its policy. Mitchell was cleared of any wrongdoing by Birmingham’s internal investigation, District Attorney Lynneice Washington in the Bessemer division, as well as one conducted by the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency/State Bureau of Investigation, the city said in court records.
The Birmingham Police Department assigned Mitchell to train other officers the next year, he said in his April 2022 deposition. He’s now a patrol officer without training responsibilities, the city told AL.com.
Richard Rice, one of the attorneys for Moore and Hardin, pointed out that Black people are more likely to be subjected to excessive force by police than others.
“With the racial makeup of the city as it is, this is an issue that hits close to home,” Rice said. “The city has really been outspoken on some of the national issues, and obviously we didn’t see that same thing on something that happened at home.”
Attorneys for Moore and Hardin say Moore ran from the police that night because he had a warrant and did not want to miss the upcoming birth of his child.
State court records show Moore had warrants for failure to appear in court on charges of drug possession, attempting to elude police and possession of drug paraphernalia.
Hardin said in her signed sworn statement to the court that none of the police officers attempted to provide medical attention as Moore lay dying on the ground next to the car.
In Hood’s body camera footage, officers are seen sometimes standing around or walking away from Moore’s body. Officer Foster said in her affidavit that she saw two officers giving Moore chest compressions before medics arrived.
When paramedics from Hueytown Fire & Rescue arrived at the scene, they found Moore lying on his back on Allison-Bonnett Memorial Drive, with his hands cuffed behind his back, per the autopsy report. They pronounced him dead at 12:11 a.m. on June 16.
After the shooting, Hardin was taken to UAB’s hospital, where she said she was handcuffed to a bed alone for six hours, per her affidavit. A Birmingham police officer questioned her, but never charged her with any crime, she said.
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