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Police release body camera videos of college students being pulled over at gunpoint
Police released footage from 13 body-worn cameras showing the Oct. 1 incident.
Police have released body camera videos showing a controversial traffic stop during which two college students were taken into custody at gunpoint in Glassboro, New Jersey.
The Glassboro Police Department on Tuesday released more than two hours of footage from 13 officer body-worn cameras showing the Oct. 1 incident, from start to finish.
"The videos are being offered in the spirit of complete transparency and to demonstrate the Police Department’s compliance with appropriate protocols and training for dealing with this type of incident," Glassboro Police Chief Franklin Brown, Jr., said in a statement.
The footage begins with officers investigating a shoplifting report at a mobile phone store located within the Collegetown Shopping Center in Glassboro, a borough in Gloucester County, around 4:30 p.m. local time. Suddenly, a man runs into the shop and tells the officers he just saw someone with a handgun get into a black Dodge Charger parked at the shopping center and drive off.
"Officer, see that Charger right there? He just came out of the store with a gun in his hand. I don't know if it's fake, I don't know if it's a joke," the witness says in the video.
"This store?" one of the officers asks.
"He came out of a store with a gun in his hand and walked into the car with a gun," the witness says, later telling police that he was "one-thousand percent" certain the individual was holding a "black gun."
The officers dash out of the shop and into their marked vehicles, while radioing to fellow officers. The officers pursue the Charger until it eventually stops in a parking lot on Rowan University's campus.
Several officers get out of their vehicles and draw their guns at the Charger while taking cover behind their own cars. Inside the Charger were two Rowan University students, according to police.
"Put your hands out the window -- do it now!" one officer yells.
"Driver, roll down all the windows with your left hand -- do it now!" he yells again. "All passengers put your hands up -- do it now!"
The driver, a young black man, follows the officers' orders. He gets out of the Charger with his hands in the air, slowly walks backwards to the officers, gets down on his knees and puts his hands behind his back, while officers keep their guns drawn.
An officer then places him in handcuffs and tells him he's "being detained right now."
"For what?" the driver asks repeatedly. "I swear to God, y'all better have a valid reason for this s--t."
"For what?" the officer retorts, while patting him down.
"For what?" the driver says back. "Y'all got all these cop cars on us, what the f--k happened?"
The officer places the driver in the back of a police SUV, while the other officers yell to the passenger in the Charger to follow the same commands. By this point, a number of onlookers have gathered nearby and stop to watch the incident unfold.
The passenger, a young black woman, is also placed in handcuffs. She tells the officers "there's nobody else in the car."
"What is going on?" she asks.
An officer pats her down, asking her, "Do you have anything on you?"
"No, I have my phone and a lip gloss," she responds. "Can you tell us what we did, please?"
"You're just being detained right now," the officer says.
"For what?" she asks.
"You're being detained, we'll tell you in a second," the officer says, placing her in the back of a separate police SUV.
The footage also shows the moment an officer tells the driver why he's being detained and asks for consent to search his vehicle to check for a weapon.
"Search my vehicle, go ahead!" the driver yells, still handcuffed in the back of the police SUV. "Go check my vehicle!"
Another young man, who tells police he's the driver's brother, is on scene to calm him down and vouch for him to police.
"Officer, you'd be upset too if you got pulled over and got accused for having a gun and you didn't have a gun," the brother says.
"I'm sure I would but -- listen, I'm not questioning the fact that he's upset," the officer responds. "But you have to understand from our point of view, as well. So somebody said if somebody had a gun, we're not just going to walk up on a car."
"I understand that," the brother replies. "But the way some of your officers were acting was just ridiculous."
"It's not ridiculous because we have a family to go home to," the officer says. "We have a protocol and we have a procedure we follow when we do stuff like this. We don't want to shoot anybody."
Meanwhile, another officer talks to the detained driver, who explains that he was picking up his glasses from and eyeglass store and is now missing class.
"I'm a student here," the driver tells the officer. "Making me look crazy in front of all my peers."
"He ain't making it to class 'cause we thought he had a gun," the driver says, appearing to mock police. "He didn't have a gun. We got a black student on campus. We hear this story every day on the news. I'm tired of this s--t, bro."
No gun was found in the vehicle and the students were ultimately released, police said.
The Glassboro police chief said his officers "utilized their training and followed established protocol to ensure the safety of everyone involved in this incident."
But the students, identified by ABC affiliate WPVI as Altaif Hassan and Giavanna Roberson, said they feared for their lives.
Hassan, a senior at Rowan University, shared his experience with students and faculty at a public forum that was held on campus last Friday in response to the Oct. 1 incident.
"I'm mentally playing this back over and over again, day in and day out since it happened," Hassan said. "I think that I'm going to still think about it until this is over, until something get done. Something got to change."
The Glassboro Police Department apparently declined an invitation to attend the forum.
"They told us that they were not available today," Rbrey Singleton, a Rowan University senior and president of the student government association, told WPVI.
Upon releasing the body camera videos, the Glassboro police chief said in a statement Tuesday that borough authorities and university officials will "form a committee that will meet on a regular basis to communicate and dialog to form a bridge to move forward."
Police did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for additional comment on Wednesday.
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