NYPD body-camera and drone footage released Friday shows the final moments of an hour-long standoff on the Brooklyn Bridge last month, ending when a knife-wielding man lunged toward police and was shot.
The footage shows 41-year-old Chaun Bottom walking along the bridge cables around 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 4. Detective Nicholas Giordani, a member of the NYPD’s Emergency Services Unit, climbed hundreds of feet above the East River and repeatedly urged Bottom to come down and drop his knife.
“What’s going on, man? What brought you up here?” Giordani asks.
“What’s going on in your day that you think this is the only option you have?” he tells Bottom.
For roughly 50 minutes, Giordani tried to persuade Bottom to move away from the bridge’s edge, asking what had led him there.
“This is the last place I want you to be right now, man. Whatever’s going on in your life, we could talk about it, we could discuss it,” Giordani says in the footage.
“I don’t want to see you up here. I understand the view is nice, but there’s no reason to be up here right now.”
At one point, the detective urges Bottom to return toward the center of the bridge instead of remaining over its side.
“Look, man, I know you don’t know me, I get that, but I care about you more than you’re gonna know, and I plan on spending however much time I can to show you that,” Giordani says.
“There is stuff left. You have your whole life ahead of you,” he continues. “Don’t say there’s nothing left. Yes, there is. I promise you there is plenty ahead of you.”
As the standoff neared its end, Giordani noticed Bottom’s weapon and told him to drop it if he moved back.
Bottom is then seen raising the knife and lunging toward the detective as officers shout, “Drop the knife.”
Sgt. Dennis Dooley, who was positioned on the bridge’s roadbed, fired one shot, striking Bottom.
After the shooting, officers rushed to pull Bottom away from the side of the bridge while continuing to order him to drop the weapon.
Bottom was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The footage did not make clear what Bottom was saying to the officers. ESU Chief Gerard V. Dowling previously told reporters that Bottom said: “I want to die, I want you to kill me, I have a bomb, you’re going to make me do something bad to the cops.”
The NYPD said its Force Investigation Division will continue reviewing and analyzing the fatal shooting.