Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Police Chief Art Acevedo held a news briefing Saturday to discuss a number of officer involved shootings that have occurred in the city since mid-April.
“We know that there’s a big discussion about the six officer-involved shootings involving fatalities in the last couple of months,” Acevedo said during the briefing. “Where there’s been a lot of outcry in terms of releasing the videos."
During the briefing, Acevedo said he doesn’t believe that footage of the incidents should be released prior to the completion of a criminal investigation.
“Primarily because we are Houston,” Acevedo said. “We are Harris County, the most diverse county, the most diverse big city in the country. We have the most diverse jury pool. We have a police department that is homegrown and is minority-majority like the city we serve which is part of the reason that I believe that these men and women, they are from of the community, they’re part of the community, they love this community and they understand this community and they have a relationship with this community where we’re doing better than other cities.”
During the news briefing, Sylvester and Acevedo were joined by the family members of those involved in recent fatal officer-involved shootings in Houston. Acevedo described the family members gathered as stakeholders in the situation. Relatives of Rosalie Cook, the 80-year-old woman stabbed to death at Walgreens, Adrian Medearis, the gospel artist shot and killed by an officer during a May 8 traffic stop, Nicolas Chavez, who was shot dead by HPD officers while he was on his knees on April 21, were among those present at the news briefing.
Several of the family members who spoke during the briefing said they did not want footage of their loved ones released to the public.
“We are trying to honor that,” Acevedo said. “Obviously we’re going to follow the law, we’re going to follow the process. We’re chief for everybody, that’s the mayor for everybody. We have to keep everybody’s perspective.”
In past days and weeks, other relatives have called on the department to release footage of the officer-involved shootings to the public.
There have been six officer-involved shooting deaths involving the Houston Police Department since mid-April.
The Houston Police Department has faced scrutiny recently from advocacy groups calling for transparency in how the officer-involved shootings are being handled.
The Houston Police Officers’ Union is among the organizations pushing the department to release videos from the recent officer-involved shootings.
WATCH: View the new briefing in its entirety below