Fort Worth police video shows officers shooting at restaurant owner

FORT WORTH, Texas - Fort Worth police released body camera video and answered questions about why officers shot at a restaurant owner who was investigating a burglary alarm at his business.

No one was injured, but the video shows just how close this story came to having a very different outcome.

Fort Worth police shoot at restaurant owner

The backstory:

The incident happened just before 4 a.m. on March 12 at Taquería Ruby on Terminal Road.

Police said they got a call about a burglary alarm that had gone off and an open door at the restaurant. 

As they made their way to the back of the business, they spotted a man with a gun.

"Officers gave verbal commands for him to show them his hands, however, he did not immediately comply," Fort Worth police said in a press release. "Fearing for their safety, one officer fired his duty weapon at the man. He was not hit."

Police said the man immediately complied and was taken into custody. That’s when police learned the man was actually the owner of the restaurant.

Someone else had reportedly broken into the restaurant and storage area in the back.

No one was hurt, and the owner was released without facing any charges.

Body camera video shows confrontation

What happened:

The video released on Tuesday shows several Fort Worth officers walking toward the back of the restaurant with their guns drawn.

"Show me your hands. Stop! Show me…(gunshot)," the officers say as the owner comes into view.

The owner appears startled and points his gun in the direction of the officers. An officer immediately fires one shot.

"Put the gun down. Drop the gun," the officers order.

"I’m the owner. I’m the owner," the owner calls out as he drops his weapon.

Communication gap

What they're saying:

FWPD Assistant Chief Robert Alldredge attributed the shooting to a gap in communication between the owner and the police officers.

"The officers were unaware that the business owner was on scene and the business owner was unaware the officers were on his property," he said.

In situations like these, the chief said it's always ideal if the business owners let the police know when they're going to be on the property. But obviously that didn't happen in this case.

The owner of Taquería Ruby told FOX 4 on Tuesday that he didn't know officers were approaching. They never announced themselves. The only thing he recalls is hearing the gunshot.

"So in an ideal situation, whenever the officers have time to announce, they're going to announce. You can see from the video things happened very, very quickly. The business owner himself pointed his weapon at the officers, unknowingly knowing that those were officers. And so the officers really didn't have time to say, ‘Hey, I’m the police here.' What are you going to do? Because things unfolded so quickly," Chief Alldredge said.

The chief said he can put himself in the owner's shoes and understands his point of view.

"Oh, absolutely. I can put myself in his shoes. That if it was my business and I was on the property, and somebody is yelling at me to drop a gun and I not knowing who they are, I can see his perspective for sure," he said.

Local perspective:

Alex Del Carmen is a criminologist at Tarleton State University. He reviewed the body camera video.

"When the officers show up to the scene, they are going to be looking for a suspect," he said. "They're not going to be looking for a victim or an owner of a premises at 2:30 a.m., right?" 

Del Carmen believes the officers followed their training, even though they didn't announce themselves as police before giving commands. 

"In a perfect world, we would have loved for that officer to have been able to say, ‘Police! Show me your hands. Stand back. Do the following things.’ But that officer has a very small window in which to actually say that," he said. "And so I would argue that in this particular case, the officer was not at fault for doing anything other than following protocol based on what the policy says."

Del Carmen agrees that more coordination on both sides would have changed the outcome. 

"I don't think this is an issue of mistaken identity as much as it is an issue of lack of coordination," he said. "But I think both the business owner as well as the officer were both having the best intent in mind, which was to try to apprehend the individual and try to solve the case." 

What's next:

The two officers who were involved in the shooting were placed on leave for three days as part of the standard internal investigation. They returned to work on Tuesday.

Police are still searching for the suspects who broke into the property.

Fort WorthFort Worth Police DepartmentCrime and Public SafetyInstagram Links