Family of Man Shot 14 Times by Cops Wants Charges

The family of a man killed in July by Sacramento police after 911 callers reported he was waving a knife and acting erratically demanded Monday that two officers face murder charges after dash-cam video revealed they talked inside their police cruiser about running him down. He dodged the cruiser twice and was shot 14 times less than a minute later by the same two officers, the AP reports. The officers "behaved like big game hunters closing in on an animal," says John Burris, a lawyer for the family of Joseph Mann, who was mentally unstable and homeless.

The demand for charges came as LAPD chief Charlie Beck defended his officers in the fatal shootings of a black man Saturday who police say was armed with a loaded semi-automatic gun and a Hispanic man on Sunday who officers say was wielding a replica handgun. In the Sacramento case, police have said Mann was waving a knife in the air and doing karate moves in the streets just before police responded. But Burris told reporters he was not threatening anybody and that the two officers who shot him should face a US Justice Department civil rights investigation in addition to murder charges. (More Sacramento stories.)