Kentucky police released officer body camera video on Friday showing a Louisville Metropolitan Police officer shooting at two teenagers during a trespassing call.
In the footage, released more than a week after the 20 February incident, officer Brendan Kaiser can be seen approaching the garage of a vacant property in Chicasaw with his gun drawn.
“They could hear movement inside of the garage and had drawn their weapon because they did not know who was inside, how many people were inside, and whether the individuals were armed,” the department said in a news release accompanying the video.
He realises there are people inside the building, and calls for an additional officer to arrive to the scene.
"They just tried to get out,” the officer says on his radio. “We’re going to have multiple people. I just shut the garage door on them. I got them trapped in. I think they’re probably trying to get out the window.”
Suddenly, the doors of the garage fly open, and two teens begin to run away. As officer Kaiser approaches the pair, his gun goes off.
The two youths at the scene say they were injured in the shooting and checked in at local hospitals. The LMPD, meanwhile, said there is reason to doubt this claim.
Neither the officers nor the individual detained were hurt during the incident,” the agency said. “Also there were no evidence present at the scene that would’ve indicted that anyone had been injured.”
Mr Kaiser, hired in 2016, is on administrative leave while the LMPD conducts an investigation of the incident
Attorneys for the injured teens say the officer has a long history of excessive uses of force.
"This officer has a history of red flag behavior," attorney Sam Aguiar told the Louisville Courier-Journal. "The department needs to explain immediately why his prior incidents didn’t prompt corrective action and training."
In 2018, Mr Kaiser was exonerated for fatally shooting a man who, according to the LMPD, threw a knife at the officer, according to the paper.
He was also admonished multiple times, including a brief suspension, for violating department policies are de-escalation and “innappropriate force” on a juvenile.
In 2021, the Department of Justice announced an investigation into the Louisville police department, following outrage at the 2020 shooting of Breonna Taylor, who was fatally shot during a no-knock police raid.
