East Lansing Police Oversight Commission pushes for more video to be released in Meijer police shooting

EAST LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - The East Lansing Police Oversight Commission held a second special meeting Monday to further discuss the April police shooting outside a busy grocery store.

The first special meeting took place on April 28, where the Oversight Commission voted unanimously to release the footage of the incident within a week. The footage was released, in part, May 5.

More: Community responds to released video of East Lansing police shooting

The second meeting took place 6 p.m. Monday at the Hannah Community Center. The Oversight Commission scolded the East Lansing police for not meeting its demand. The Commission had asked for all the raw video from the police shooting and the video released came from four officer body cameras and an exterior surveillance camera.

The Commission said that’s not enough. A representative with the East Lansing police said the department has security footage from cameras inside the store. One commissioner said the footage that was released left her with more questions than answers.

The Commission, as a whole, said they need to see what happened inside the Meijer store in order to remain transparent with the community. An attorney of one of the officers involved agreed.

“I’d love to see everything come out,” said Mike Nichols.

Nichols is the attorney for Jose Viera, one of the police officers who opened fire at DeAnothny VanAtten. A report submitted to the oversight committee identified Viera and Jim Menser as the officers involved.

“If you listen to the body-worn camera for Jose, you hear, ‘He’s got a gun, he’s got a gun, he’s reaching,’” Nichols said.

Nichols said he appreciates the videos which have been released, because he believes it shows the innocence of Viera, but like everyone else, he hopes the East Lansing Police Department will release the footage from inside the store to get a better and more complete picture of the events.

Related: City of East Lansing releases footage of police shooting at Meijer

“The reason why I’m so pleased about that coming out is you can see on officers 3 and 4, on their body-worn camera, when they’re walking into Meijer to get eyes on the young man he obviously runs, because they’re chasing after him,” Nichols said. “So hopefully that interior video is going to show us that.”

The commission was asked if they had access to any of the cell phone footage that was captured by witnesses. They said they were unaware of any such footage and they would have to consult Michigan State Police, who is conducting the investigation.

Despite pushback from the East Lansing Police Cpt. Chad Pride, the department has been given seven days to release the video captured by Meijer surveillance cameras.

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