Bodycam footage shows Phoenix police shooting woman in her car

Body camera footage released Monday by Phoenix police shows the moment officers shot and seriously injured a woman in late May after police thought she pointed a gun at them, which was later determined to be a "butane lighter resembling a handgun."

At about 7:30 p.m. on May 22, officers were investigating a vehicle in the area of 35th and Glendale avenues. In a statement released on Monday, Sgt. Rob Scherer with Phoenix police said officers approached the vehicle after receiving a call about an unresponsive woman inside a running car.

The video released by police, which contains snippets of edited body camera footage as well as audio from the 911 call, shows a woman sitting in the driver's seat of a sedan vehicle with a dog in the backseat while an officer knocks and then pounds on her window and tells her to put her vehicle in park. The woman does not comply, reverses her car and drives off from the parking lot.

The video then jumps to a traffic stop being conducted when the woman pulls into an apartment complex. Officers are heard asking her to turn off the vehicle and throw the keys out the window, but the car once again drives off.

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The woman's vehicle was ultimately stopped when officers used a grappler near 19th Avenue and Phelps Road, Scherer said. Police then commanded her to turn off the car and show her hands, which she did not comply with and "produced an object perceived to be a handgun and pointed it at an officer," Scherer said. Several officers fired the handguns at her.

Body camera footage from one of the officers shows an officer standing on the driver's side of the patrol car and telling the woman to show her hands and turn the car off, all while a dog barks continuously. The car and the woman cannot be seen in the video.

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Several gunshots are heard being fired after an officer yells over the radio, "She's got a gun!" After the firing ceases, the officer standing by the driver's side of the patrol car moves closer to the front of his car, at which point part of the woman's vehicle is in camera view, and fires at least four more shots. The woman is not in view.

The officer then says, "She's still moving!" and orders the woman to show her hands. He is then heard asking another officer if he can see the gun, to which another officer replies that he can't.

Officers continue giving her orders and the car is heard accelerating. Officers then use a less lethal 40 mm launcher and an irritant spray in order to break the glass and "coax the woman out," Scherer said.

Body camera footage shows the woman crawling out the window as officers command her to do so. Officers then pull her out of the car through the window and cuff her on the ground while the woman yells for help.

The woman, who was not identified by police, was arrested and hospitalized. Police did not release information about her condition or the charges she faced.

After searching the vehicle, police said they found a butane lighter in the shape of a gun.

In the initial May 23 news release, Phoenix Police Department described the woman to have pulled out a gun and pointed it "in the direction of an officer." There was no mention of a butane lighter.

According to Scherer, two of the officers involved are part of the Tactical Support Bureau and have been with the department for 17 years. The other officer, assigned to the South Mountain precinct, has been with the department for five years.

Scherer said that the department had launched a criminal and administrative investigation into the shooting, as is standard protocol in police shootings.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix police bodycam shows officers shooting woman in car