A suburban Los Angeles law enforcement agency fought two years to keep secret the dashcam video of Gardena Police Department officers shooting two suspects, one of whom was fatally wounded. The victims were mistakenly believed to have stolen a bicycle outside a drugstore on June 2, 2013. Video shows police unleashing a volley of gunfire as one of the victims has his arms up while another keeps raising and lowering his hands.

A federal judge ordered the video unsealed late Tuesday at a request of the Los Angeles Times, Associated Press, and Bloomberg News following the city of Gardena settling a federal lawsuit over the shooting for $4.7 million. The city, just outside of Los Angeles, fought until the eleventh hour in its failed bid to convince US District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles to block the release of the short video from two dashcams fastened to a pair of patrol cruisers. The department said it believed the settlement of the case would include the tape remaining private.

The judge ruled (PDF) that the department's "argument backfires here—the fact that they spent the city's money, presumably derived from taxes, only strengthens the public's interest in seeing the videos."

Wilson added: "Moreover, while the videos are potentially upsetting and disturbing because of the events they depict, they are not overly gory or graphic in a way that would make them a vehicle for improper purposes."

The video's release comes as police departments nationwide are embracing dashcams and body cams as both a crime-fighting tool and as a means to provide the public some level of transparency. But the terabytes of video these cameras are producing often don't see the light of day. The footage largely remains a non-public record in most agencies as police departments struggle to balance protecting themselves and the privacy of the public they're in contact with on a daily basis.

Gardena immediately appealed the judge's decision to release the videos to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals. The city labeled the footage "confidential information" (PDF). After the video was released, the San Francisco-based appeals court ordered it "to remain under seal pending further order of this court." The appeals court ordered both sides to brief the case by Monday.

Ed Medrano, the Gardena police chief, said the force's officers are soon getting body cams. In a statement, he said that the publication of police recordings goes too far.

“Our police officers are entrusted with sensitive and extremely personal information and we often come in contact with people under tragic situations and at their worst,” he said. “We worry about the implications of this decision and its impact on victims and average citizens who are recorded by the police.”

None of the three officers involved in the shooting death of 35-year-old Ricardo Diaz Zeferino were charged. Eutiquio Acevedo Mendez has recovered after being shot in the back. Diaz Zeferino was shot eight times.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

The district attorney’s office declined to file charges against the officers. Deputy Dist. Atty. Rosa Alarcon wrote in a memo about the shooting that Diaz Zeferino’s right hand was no longer visible from the officers’ angle and that it was reasonable for them to believe he was going to reach for a weapon. “They made a split-second decision and they were not required to hold fire in order to ascertain whether Diaz [Zeferino] would, in fact, injure or kill them,” she wrote.

Due to a dispatcher's mistake, the incident occurred after police falsely believed that they were responding to a robbery. The men involved in the shooting were on bicycle helping their friend search for his stolen bike near the drugstore.