The Kansas City Police Department released a video of officers talking to Jovan Belcher just hours before he killed the mother of his 3-month-old daughter and then killed himself.
The video was taken from the dashboard camera of a police car at about 3 a.m., after officers got a call about a man passed out in a Bentley. There is no audio at all of the first five minutes of the video (police say their equipment malfunctioned) and the audio is hard to understand in the second half of the video, so it’s not entirely clear what happened during the encounter.
What audio exists mostly demonstrates that the officers were impressed with Belcher’s car. One officer asked, “What do you do?” and it sounded like Belcher answered, “play for the Chiefs.” Belcher later said, “It’s a $200,000 car,” and an officer replied, “I’ll make that in, like, three years.”
Belcher was outside the home of another girlfriend, and officers urged him to go inside. They also said, “We’re trying to cut you a break here,” without elaborating. Officers left as Belcher was let into the home.
Two women who lived at that home have since confirmed that they woke Belcher up about three hours later so that he could be up in time for a team meeting. He then drove to the home he shared with Kasandra Perkins and their daughter, shot and killed her, and then drove to the Chiefs’ facility and killed himself.
The full video is below.