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"Drop the gun!" Officer Jerry Moravek shouts several times as he chases Khalif Cooper, 28, down John Street around 3:30 a.m. June 11.
Suddenly, two shots ring out and Cooper falls face down in the street.
Moravek handcuffs Cooper, who repeatedly says, "I don't got no gun."
"Shots fired," the officer says into his radio. "Send ALS [Advanced Life Support] and supervisors. Send ALS."
Moravek repeatedly asks for an ambulance. The handcuffed Cooper, still on his stomach, looks up and asks if he's called for one. He says he has.
Moravek then turns Cooper onto his back and asks if he's OK.
“Yes,” Cooper says.
"Why did you run from me?" the officer asks.
"I was scared," Cooper replies. "I don't got no gun, though."
A couple of screaming women arrive along with several uniformed officers who hold them back.
Moravek then heads back up the street, telling a colleague, "I saw him with a handgun."
He calls to another officer: "Did you get it?"
"Get what?" the other officer asks.
"You saw him with a gun here," Moravek says.
"Huh?" the other officer asks.
"You didn't see him with a gun here?" Moravek asks.
"He was runnin' from something. I don't know," the other officer replies. "He must've dropped it somewhere."
The officers begin searching the ground around parked vehicles on Garrison Street. Seconds later, Moravek finds a black handgun between two cars.
"That's the one I saw him with," he says.
Valdes released the video Friday as part of an investigation that’s mandated by state law whenever someone is shot by police.
The results will be presented to a grand jury, “which will determine whether the officer’s use of deadly force was justified under the law,” the prosecutor said.
The incident began when Moravek and other officers on a quality-of-life detail responded to a noise complaint involving a large group of people on Garrison Street, Valdes said.
Two other officers approached Dominique Capron, 28, of Paterson, who took off on foot, dropping a handgun as he went, she said.
Police nabbed Capron in a nearby driveway.
They brought him to headquarters, charged him with resisting arrest, hindering apprehension and various weapons offenses – including possessing a firearm as a convicted felon – and sent him to the Passaic County Jail.
Meanwhile, at the scene, police hear gunshots coming from Maron Street, less than a block away.
Moravek runs down Garrison Street toward Marion Street, calling out “shots fired” on his police radio.
He's suddenly passed by Cooper, an ex-con, who’s running from the direction of the gunshots.
Moravek turns and begins chasing Cooper down Garrison Street onto John Street.
In Valdes’s words: “On John Street, Officer Moravek fired his service-issued firearm two times. One round struck Cooper in the lower back.”
Cooper was later treated at St. Joseph’s University Medical Center.
State law requires the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office or its designee to investigate police shootings. This is done no matter what the circumstances are.
The guidelines guarantee that the investigation is conducted “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas.
Once the investigation is completed, the results are presented to a grand jury.
The grand jury reviews a host of evidence -- including witness interviews, body and dashcam video, and forensic and autopsy results – before voting on whether or not there was cause to suspect any wrongdoing on the part of law enforcement.
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