On the afternoon of September 13th, 2020 the Lancaster Bureau of Police issued a statement at a press conference that was aired on Facebook Live, in response to the murder of a young man by Police. Here is the transcription of what was said.
"Alright, so I will begin by stating my name is Jarrad Berkihiser, chief of Police for the City of Lancaster. I will provide you with some important information about an officer involved shooting that happened earlier today and I am not prepared to take any questions at this point in time."
• 0:56 - 1:10
About 415 PM, Sunday September 13th, officers from Lancaster [city?] police responded to the residence in the 300 block of Laurel Street for a reported domestic in progress. Officers arrived on the scene- a few minutes later and there was an officer involved shooting.
1:11 - 1:12
Our information at this time indicates that we have an adult male that is deceased and the male was reportedly armed with a knife at the time of the officer involved shooting.
1:16 - 1:44
Lancaster County District Attorney's office and their investigators have been notified and have responded to our police station to assume the lead investigation. As for the District Attorney's Office protocol, officer involved shootings within Lancaster County are investigated by their office and their investigators. All future press inquiries should be directed to Lancaster County District Attorney's office.
• 1:45 - 2:14
The last thing I'm going to say is any loss of life regardless of how it happens is devastating. It’s devastating for everybody involved. It's devastating for a police department, the families, and our community. It's absolutely devastation. We need the community to come together and we want the community to stay calm. Stay at peace and allow this process to play out. The District Attorney's office is going to have a criminal investigation and while they're doing- conducting a criminal investigation. We're going to be conducting our administrative personnel investigation to make sure policy, training, and use of force was properly followed and established.
• 2:24 - 2:54
Also, I wanna talk about the outside agencies that we have at the crime scene right now. We have several outside agencies, including Pennsylvania State Police and surrounding jurisdictions. Who called in to assist us with crime scene security at the scene, as most of you know you came from the scene, and we do have a rather large crowd there and they're just there to assist us with staffing, because we do have 911 calls for service that don't stop because we had this happen. So we also have agencies from outside jurisdictions to help with 911 call service and in addition to helping us secure the crime scene.
• 3:00 - 3:05
[reporter] What are you going to do to quell any kind of activity tonight in that area?
• 3:07 - 3:33
That’s the only question I'm going to take and that’s the only question I’m going to answer at this point. So what we do have is community stakeholders, clergy, and members of our community police working group that are within the crowd- that are trying to keep the peace within the crowd. But what I can also tell you, is we also have other armed individuals walking around within that crowd of personnel, that crowd, and everybody is peaceful at this point in time and that's what we want, them to remain peaceful.
• 3:34 - 4:03
There’s a protocol that needs to be followed. There's an investigation that has to play out here and we're just asking everybody to maintain peace and allow the investigation to play out. Allow the district attorney office to do their job. It does us no good to create other harm or other, you know, have other loss of life or injury or any type of property damage within city. That does absolutely nobody any good because it actually de-attracts investigators away from that investigation and it just takes everything, it takes a lot longer, to get everything accomplished.
• 4:07 - 4:11
We are just asking everybody to remain calm, remain peaceful. We don't mind if you are at or near the crime scene. We just asking you remain peaceful.
• 4:16 - 4:41
Allow people to get in and out of their homes. Allow the streets to remain open so we can keep traffic flowing and just above all remain peaceful. We have people there that are helping us do that. We're allowing, you know, you to have a voice at the scene. Talk to people that are community stakeholders, people with our community police working group, and the area clergy. Absolutely, allow that to happen, but please maintain peace. Alright, thank you.