Cop Who Shot De’Von Bailey, Killed Another Fleeing Person Eight Years Ago

Officer Van’t Land, one of the killers of De’Von Bailey, has a history of excessive force and shooting another fleeing suspect.

Land is coming under the microscope during the pre-trials for the shooting death of De’Von Bailey, a 19-year-old Black man who was shot while he was running away––all caught on bodycam on August 3 in Colorado Springs. But the police department would only release edited footage, not all of the raw video.

Reverend Promise Lee, speaking for the Bailey family described the edited video as “a fabricated documentary. What we wanted to see was the raw footage, and we didn’t get that. We got an edited version. And if you go back and look at the video, you can see that they paused in various places to make it more in favor of the Colorado Springs Police Department’s version of this thing.”

The video shows that Bailey did have a gun but never actually reached for it. The accusations against Bailey and his cousin for the robbery they were supposedly stopped for has also come under question.

Related Article: Black Father of Three Shot Dead in L.A., Lawsuit Looming and Backlash on Social Media

Attorney Daniel Key, who is representing Laurence Stoker, Bailey’s cousin who was with him at the time, presented evidence at a court hearing last week that Land was accused of striking a 51-year-old man three times while another officer tased him at the same time. Land was accused of excessive force and the city ponied up $50,000 to settle the case two years later.

In 2012, Land was one of the officers that murdered Robert Kresky as he was running away. Land Kresky was unarmed. Land shot him 14 times. The DA’s office found the shooting of Kresky to be justified in March 2013. It is the same DA’s office that is now deciding whether or not to press charges in the murder of Bailey.

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