ORLANDO, Fla. — The Orlando Police Department has released video showing a police takedown of a man with a gun pointed at him by the officer.
The man involved said the officer threatened to kill him after he ran when police pulled up behind him.
The officer has been disciplined and is back on the street, but even fellow officers are wondering why.
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It was a year ago when Taurus Bryant was chased down by Orlando police.
They said he was in a stolen car.
But it’s what happened next that prompted an investigation into Office Ivan Sumayang.
The video appears to show an officer point a gun to the back of a man’s head.
The officer told Internal Affairs that he thought Bryant was trying to arm himself. But investigators said the officer never saw a gun.
OPD policy says you only point a gun this way when you are aiming and plan to fire.
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During the internal affairs interview, Sumayang said the reason he placed the gun there on the soft part of his neck was because if he severed that, “then all lower-body stuff would stop.” He also said, “I know that if I were going to hit the skull it was a possibility of it moving around.”
Sumayang was cleared of excessive force, but in the end, the officer got one hour of retraining and an 80-hour suspension for violation the standards of conduct policy.
Sumayang is now back on the job at Orlando International Airport.
Orlando police said that’s because “the current collective bargaining agreement and discipline handed down in past incidents determined the discipline in this case.”
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Police said you can’t put the gun in single-action mode unless you are aiming to fire per policy.
Standards of conduct violations could mean termination.
The fraternal order of police said that Sumayang asked to go to arbitration over that punishment, but they declined to take that case.
The union filed it in case he wanted to take it up on his own with his own attorney, but he didn’t.
Cox Media Group
