“These officers gave numerous, numerous commands to drop the firearm, put it down… and he did not,” officials said after responding to a domestic call. NBC6’s Niko Clemmons reports.
Police in Hialeah shot and killed an armed man after responding to an emergency call about a "violent dispute" on Friday morning, officials said.
Hialeah Police officials said officers responded to a domestic call at 535 W. 53rd Street at around 7 a.m., where they encountered an armed man.
"At some point, police were forced to fire and killed the individual," the department said in a statement.
The man died at the scene. His identity hasn't been released.
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Aerial footage from Chopper 6 showed a large police presence in the neighborhood. A body could be seen in the driveway of a home covered by a yellow tarp.
Police said it was an isolated incident and that there was no danger to the public.
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Steadman Stahl, president of the South Florida Police Benevolent Association, said the officers were responding to some sort of domestic call.
"No officer ever cherishes taking somebody’s life, but they were being dispatched, these domestic situations are extremely volatile, and unfortunately when you’re confronting officers with firearms, it’s never gonna work out good for the subject," Stahl said. "I don’t know what led up to the domestic but I know they were dispatched here, these officers responded and did what they were trained to do and unfortunately the subject gave the officers no other choice.”
Stahl said the officers had no choice when they saw the man was armed.
"They had no choice, they were given no option, they gave numerous, numerous commands to drop the firearm and he chose not to, and unfortunately, this is what led us here," he said.
Dr. Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Miami, said domestic violence calls are extremely challenging for police officers because they have to make split-second, life-or-death decisions.
“They don’t know the state of the individual, whether alcohol is involved, whether drugs were involved, what kind of gun it is, what the circumstances are in fact, you know, it’s one of the deadliest calls for service," he said.
Piquero said sometimes, a distraught person will point a gun at police officers, knowing they will shoot back.
"It’s hard to say if this person is suicidal, from their perspective, they may want to attack the officers to try to get away, so it’s hard to whether it’s suicide by cop until we get all the information, all of the investigation," he said.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is taking over the investigation, which is standard practice in police-involved shootings.
NBC6 is working to learn more about the shooting.
