Analyst dissects body camera footage of HPD officer fatally shooting man who complained about noise

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — An intense video released by the Houston Police Department shows the moments before Michael Hayes was shot and killed.

The first minutes of the 13-minute video show officers Novotny and Contreras speaking with partygoers who said a man, who we now know was Hayes, threatened to shoot and stab people because he said the music was too loud. Contreras can even be heard commenting on the noise in the video.

“Wow, that is really loud,” Contreras says.

Eventually, Hayes came back out on the street. It’s hard to see what’s in his hands in the video, but police start demanding he drops a knife. When Hayes keeps moving forward, two shots are fired by Novotny.

“Drop the knife. Grab your Taser,” Novotny shouts.

We brought the video to a police consultant who has analyzed videos like this for us before. He said he didn’t see police misconduct, just a tragic unfolding of events.

“It’s a situation where a man brought deadly conduct to a situation, and deadly force was used to resolve the issue,” consultant Mark Stephens said.

Hayes’ family wanted to know why a gun was used and not a Taser. You can hear the officer who pulled the trigger telling his partner to get a Taser.

Houston Police Officers’ Union president, Dough Griffith, said when confronted with a potentially deadly situation, it’s not good practice to waste time switching out weapons.

“You’re not going to holster your weapon when you got a guy with two knives standing 10 feet from you,” Griffith said.

We asked the analyst, why even start with a gun and not pull a non-deadly option like a Taser first?

“A Taser was never designed, nor should they ever be used to combat deadly force. And we should never expect or enforce our police officers to put themselves in that kind of disadvantage,” Stephens said.

In the video, you can hear Novotny telling his partner to get their Taser out.

“Grab your Taser!” Novotny shouted.

And you can see Contreras switch out weapons. So, why shoot when you ask your partner to get a non-deadly weapon ready? The union president said it takes time for a Taser to be usable, and Novotny ran out of time when he backed into a car.

“It takes a minute to get that Taser out; get it cranked up and ready to go. It has a safety switch on it, so you have to take it off, power it up, and then you can deploy,” Griffith said.

HPD said they are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the shooting.