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After Ronald K. Davis rear-ended a St. Paul police squad, he immediately ran toward the officer, body camera footage of the fatal encounter released Tuesday shows.

Officer Steven Mattson’s camera spun toward the sky as he hit the ground and he said, “Holy (expletive).” A witness has said she saw Davis throw the officer to the ground.

Mattson’s flashlight fell and Davis, 31, can be seen on video holding a knife in one hand and the flashlight in the other as he continued to run at the officer, who had stood back up.

Mattson shouted, “Get away from me. Drop the knife. Drop the (expletive) knife. Drop the knife!,” and then he shot Davis.

The encounter lasted 12 to 13 seconds from the time Mattson opened his squad door to the shooting. Davis was pronounced dead at the scene on Sept. 15 in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood at Thomas Avenue and Griggs Street.

Mayor Melvin Carter said Tuesday he watched the body camera footage and saw an “incredibly dangerous and scary event that no person and certainly no officer would ever hope to encounter.”

Carter said he watched Mattson “defending himself while retreating.”

And as the son of a retired St. Paul police officer, Carter said he could not “look at that video and tell you that there’s something else, something more that I could have expected that officer to do.”

INVESTIGATION ONGOING

Police Chief Todd Axtell released the body camera footage as the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigation remains underway.

Axtell said he hopes quickly making the video public “will allow us to move forward with some mature discourse about how such tragedies” can be prevented in the future without “having to wade through the waters of irresponsible accusations of murder, calculated cries of injustice and threats made against one of my officers — an officer who had no choice but to defend himself against … a violent act.

“… Wearing a badge does not automatically make you wrong any more than standing in the street with a megaphone automatically makes you right,” Axtell continued.

Nekima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney and co-founder of Racial Justice Network who spoke at a march for Davis on Sunday, took issue with Axtell’s remarks Tuesday.

“As activists, we have a right to stand for justice, we have a right to demand accountability, we have a right to go beyond a splice of body camera footage and demanding a full accounting of what happened to Ronald Davis,” Levy Armstrong said.

A coalition of Twin Cities anti-police brutality groups called on Tuesday for public release of all documentation in the Davis case and an independent investigation, not by the BCA.

DAVIS’ MOTHER SAW VIDEO FIRST

Axtell noted the video is difficult to watch and said his heart goes out to Davis’ family.

A deputy police chief showed Davis’ mother the video on Tuesday morning before it was made public, said Steve Linders, a department spokesman.

Axtell met with Davis’ wife shortly after the shooting. The department tried to reach the woman about showing her the video, including going to her residence, but was unable to make contact with her, according to Linders.

Axtell said when the police department has made mistakes, they have “a proven track record of taking responsibility.” But he added, “This simply is not one of those times.”

“While I recognize the trauma that has been caused by a history of policing practices throughout our country that have disproportionately affected communities of color, I cannot stand by — I simply can’t sleep at night — knowing that a good officer, and all of our officers, are being assailed by people who simply don’t have the facts,” Axtell said.

‘FOREVER CHANGED’

The Davis family is mourning and police officers, especially Mattson and his family, “are all forever changed by this regrettable event,” Carter said. “And I’m hoping that we as a community do everything that we can every single day … to prevent events like this from reoccurring in our city.”

Davis was recently married and was also a father.

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Sept. 30 is last day for public comment on Pigs Eye Lake makeover A few days before he died, he completed a facilities and maintenance training program. He’d also gone through other training recently “and was on his way to a wonderful life,” according to a GoFundMe account for his funeral expenses.

Last year, Davis pleaded guilty to burglary stemming from a September 2017 break-in at a T-Mobile store in Brooklyn Center. About a decade earlier, Davis was convicted of robbery with a firearm in Chicago, according to a St. Paul police report.

Mattson, who was on administrative leave after the shooting, is back at work in a non-patrol position.

He joined the St. Paul police force in August 2018 and began patrolling in December after completing the department’s academy. He was previously an officer in North St. Paul and Dickinson, N.D.

Paul Kuntz, St. Paul Police Federation president, said Tuesday the case “reiterates how dangerous our jobs are.”

PROSECUTORS WILL REVIEW CASE

The Ramsey County attorney’s office will review the case to determine whether the shooting was justified.

Seth Stoughton, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina of Law who studies policing and the use-of-force, said the body-camera footage seems to indicate that the officer’s use of deadly force was reasonable under federal law.

“When you have someone running at you with a knife, especially when they are that physically close to you, the fear is that if you do not use deadly force … and terminate the threat, it will be too late to prevent yourself from being stabbed or badly cut,” Stoughton said.

He added that body camera footage is just one piece of evidence to weigh when analyzing the reasonableness of the officer’s actions.

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Man, 38, dies of apparent natural causes at Ramsey County jail “It’s a powerful piece of evidence, but it’s incomplete,” Stoughton said. “If you really want to make an informed evaluation it will involve the officer’s statement or report, any witness statements, forensic evidence … (such as) gun-powder residue to figure out how far Mr. Davis was from the officer when he fired. … When you put all that information together you can start to get a more accurate picture of what happened.”

Sarah Horner contributed to this report.