Two Dallas cops indicted after 'both were caught on camera shooting suspects that were not a danger'

Two Dallas police officers have been indicted in the last two weeks for shooting and wounding residents in incidents where the initial police accounts were later contradicted by video.

Cardan Spencer and Amy Wilburn were both charged with aggravated assault by a public servant.

Spencer was indicted last week after shooting a 52-year-old man standing several feet away from him.



A police report filed in the case initially claimed the man, Bobby Bennett, lunged at Spencer with a knife.

Scroll down for videos



On camera: Two officers (right) - one of them Cardan Spencer - pull their weapons on Bobby Bennett (left) seconds after arriving at the scene Boom: Bennet (left) who is said to be armed with a knife but is a clear distance from the officers, collapses after being shot Bobby Bennett falls the floor after being shot. The officers said he lunged at them with a knife, but that cannot be seen in the video

But a neighbor's surveillance video camera captured the incident and showed Bennett was several feet from the officers and didn't appear to move toward them before gunfire caused him to crumple to the ground.



Bennett survived and was hospitalized for several weeks following the October incident.

He is now suing the Dallas Police Department.



Bennett's mother, Joyce Jackson, said last year that her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and that he was off his medication at the time of the shooting.

Spencer's indictment last week followed the indictment of former officer Amy Wilburn, who was charged after shooting a 19-year-old suspected carjacker.

Senior Cpl. Amy Wilburn was fired after shooting an unarmed on December 19 and has now been indicted for aggravated assault



Wilburn is thought to be the first Dallas officer to be criminally indicted in a police shooting since 1973, when Officer Darrell Cain was indicted in the 1973 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez.

Cain was convicted of murder and sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Like Spencer's, Wilburn's incident was taped, captured by the dash cam video of the car she was in.

Wilburn and a fellow officer had been chasing a car on December 9 that had been stolen in an allegedly violent carjacking when the driver pulled into an apartment complex, The Dallas News reported.



The driver ran away, and one of the officers went after him.

Wilburn ran to the car, which was still rolling toward an apartment building, and opened the driver door.

She saw Kelvion Walker in the passenger seat, pulled her gun and shot him.

She told police she had demanded to see his hands, but he didn’t appear to comply and she feared he was reaching for a gun.

But an independent witness, who was sitting in a car nearby, told reporters and internal investigators that Walker had his hands in the air and was trying to surrender at the time.

Walker also later said he had his hands in the air. He is suing Wilburn in civil court.



Dallas police fired both officers shortly after the separate incidents.



Dash cam footage shows officer Amy Wilburn running to the vehicle believed to have been involved in a violent carjacking

This is the moment Senior Cpl. Amy Wilburn shoots into the car, hitting Kelvion Walker, 19, who was not armed

Police Chief David Brown has suggested an expansion of the use of body cameras to avoid relying solely on officers' statements in disputed situations, and the department reiterated that its use of force policy gave police officers 'a responsibility to use only the degree of force necessary to protect and preserve life'.

But police union leader Ron Pinkston said the indictments are a bad signal to send to officers dealing with potentially life-threatening situations.

'The result will be more names on the police memorial wall,' he said.

In both cases, the existence of recordings brought the officers' actions into question.



But Pinkston said the video alone could be misleading — and that police work is not always clear.

'The video is just one part of the investigation,' he said.



'But that's not what the public sees.



'They only see the video and they make conclusions off the one piece of evidence.'