PHOENIX—Ryan Whitaker, 40-years-old, was fatally shot in the doorway of his apartment on May 21st by Phoenix Police Officer Jeff Cooke.
The police report and Officer John Ferragamo’s body camera footage, the officer who reported to the scene with Cooke, was released on August 11th in a public records request from The Arizona Republic and the Whitaker family lawyer, Matthew Cunningham.
Cooke’s unedited body camera footage has yet to be released.
The footage indicates that the shooting started over a noise complaint from Whitaker’s upstairs neighbor who called the police twice.
In the first call to the police department, the neighbor reports people screaming at each other and that he cannot fall asleep because they were so loud.
In the second call, the neighbor tells the 911 dispatcher “It could be physical […] I could say yeah if that makes anybody hurry on up. Get anybody here faster.”
Phoenix police initially claimed that the Whitaker shooting was an emergency domestic violence call.
Cunningham, the family’s lawyer, has stated “The Phoenix Police Department knew from the night of the shooting that this was a false and exaggerated 911 call.”
In the footage, the officers are shown approaching the apartment and standing on either side of the door, as to remain unseen from the door’s peephole.
There are no sounds of fighting or loud noises heard from the outside of the door.
Whitaker opens the door with a gun in his right hand. The police “appeared surprised by the sight of the firearm,” AZ Central reports.
According to the footage, Whitaker takes a few steps out of the apartment before Ferragamo repeatedly yells, “hands.”
Whitaker is seen moving down to his knees and putting the gun behind his back and his hands up before he is shot in the back twice by Cooke.
Ferragamo is heard saying, “Holy Sh**,” and Whitaker falls to the ground.
Seconds later, Whitaker’s girlfriend Brandee Nees walks out of the apartment screaming, “Why did you guys shoot him.”
“He pulled a gun on us, ma’am,” replies Cooke.
Nees asks why the officers are there and they reply saying they had received a call reporting potential domestic abuse.
Nees explains that Whitaker had answered the door with a gun because a few days earlier he had heard knocking on his door in the middle of the night. When he peeked through the peephole, whoever was knocking had gone.
In the video, Nees tells the officers that Whitaker had been at his daughter’s high school graduation earlier in the day. When Whitaker returned, Nees was playing Crash Bandicoot on a Playstation game console, and he joined in: “Literally we were making salsa and playing Crash Bandicoot, so there may have been some screaming […] it wasn’t domestic violence or anything.”
Cunningham noted in a public statement that viewing the full, unedited footage from Ferragamo’s body cam reinforces his previous claims that Whitaker was not an active threat.
As is detailed in the released police report, Cooke had told detectives that evening he feared for his life, and Ferragamo says he would have also shot Whitaker had Cooke not shot him first.
There have been 11 Phoenix police shootings since January 2020. Five, including Whitaker’s, were fatal.
Over the past eight years, the Phoenix police averaged 17 shootings per every one million residents—there are 1.6 million residents in the Phoenix metropolitan area.
According to AZ Central, the Phoenix Police Department’s average shootings per on million residents is larger than New York’s, Los Angeles’s, Houston’s, San Antonio’s, Dallas’s, and San Diego’s.
