VIDEO: Videos Show Albuquerque PD Efforts to Negotiate Before Shooting
Videos released by Albuquerque police last Tuesday show negotiations with officers attempting to get homeless man James Boyd to leave his campground slowly deteriorated over the course of three hours before his much publicized deadly shooting, reports the Albuquerque Journal.
Several different officers tried their hand at negotiating with 38-year-old Boyd, including a K-9 officer, a State Police officer, an officer with crisis intervention training and open space officers who made the initial contact with Boyd, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Through it all, he insisted that he was a high-ranking Department of Defense employee, that his presence in the Sandia foothills was legal, and that he needed his knives as much as officers needed their guns.
It’s not entirely clear from the videos what agreement they finally reached with Boyd. He ultimately stuffed the two small knives he was holding into his pockets, grabbed his backpack and decided to try to walk down the slope in the foothills.
That’s when an officer threw a flash grenade and other officers shot him with live rounds, beanbags and TASER rounds and set loose a police dog upon him.
