Stockton wants to know: What exactly happened in police shooting of Colby Friday?

Denise Friday’s voice was quiet and hoarse when she spoke at Stockton’s regular city council meeting Tuesday night, but her message was heard: “No justice, no peace.”

Denise’s son, 30-year-old Colby Friday, was fatally shot by a Stockton police officer last August, and since then, she’s been supported by a growing number of residents demanding footage, records and any answers from city officials.

“Every day, [Colby’s kids] are sad, they are crying, they are screaming, they are hollering, because their dad has been taken away from them,” Denise said at the city council meeting Tuesday night.

Since Colby’s shooting, protests have broken out in Stockton calling for answers.

At a memorial for Colby last October, Stockton police arrested seven protesters. Two weeks ago, Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs was escorted out of a city council meeting by Stockton PD officers after he shut down the meeting because of protesters.

And on Tuesday night at city hall, minutes after Denise spoke out asking for answers, Tubbs again shut down the meeting because of protesters.

“When can I get an answer,” Denise asked city councilmembers. “A truthful answer—from the chief of police, the district attorney, from the mayor, from the whole justice department.”

The San Joaquin County District Attorney is currently reviewing the shooting, so the official record of Colby’s death won’t be released until after the investigation.

However, during a series of interviews with Stockton PD, and after going to the scene of the shooting, we learned that, although Officer Wells failed to activate his body camera, there were other surveillance cameras in the area, which may have captured the incident.

We put in a Public Records Request with Stockton PD for the video in November, but were denied because of “multiple investigations into this incident.” We also requested the video from the DA’s office, and were once again denied.

Meanwhile, Stockton residents continue to demand the videos and details about what happened on that day.

The day of the shooting

To get some insight about what happened that day, we took to the Stockton Police Department’s Facebook page, where they post official information to both the press and the public.

According to the department’s first post regarding the shooting, Officer David Wells was “following up on a robbery investigation,” and Colby matched the description of the suspect.

By 11:46 that night, the description changed. Stockton PD reported that it was “a felony domestic violence investigation” from a week before that they were following up on.

It turns out, however, Friday was neither a domestic violence suspect nor a robbery suspect.

“At the end of the day, ‘Oops, we have the wrong guy,’” Denise said. “He was the wrong person. They wasn’t even looking for my son."

In the earlier version of the report, Stockton PD stated Colby was “armed with a handgun” when he ran away from Officer Wells.

“The officer gave chase on foot,” the report reads. “At one point, the suspect stopped running and there was a confrontation. The suspect refused to comply with the officers orders, at which point the officer fearing for not only his safety but for the safety of others fired his service weapon striking the suspect."

But later that night, the agency's Facebook page added the following details:

"At one point, the suspect’s handgun dropped and the suspect stopped running. He then turned towards the officer and the officer told him not to pick up the gun. The suspect refused to comply with the officer's verbal orders, bent over, and picked up the gun at which point the officer fearing for his own safety fired his service weapon multiple times striking the suspect."

I spoke with Felicia Faulks, who says she saw everything from her upstairs window and denies the preliminary accounts from police.

According to Faulks, Colby threw his weapon before he took off running.

“When [Officer Wells] told him to drop the weapon, [Colby] flung the weapon and it landed here,” Faulks said, as she pointed to a patch of grass outside of the gate where the shooting took place. “And then he said, ‘I have to get home,’ and he panicked. He started to run.”

Stockton's new body cameras

In December, I reported on Stockton PD’s new body cameras, as well as the unveiling of a new policy that was meant to increase transparency and trust among the community.

Prior to the Colby shooting, Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones told me the department would withhold body cam footage while an investigation was underway. The newest policy, however, allows for more flexibility, Jones said.

"Sometimes, if the public interest is so pressing that I feel it should be released,” Jones explained, “I now have the ability to do so in a relatively brief time frame, especially compared to the long time it takes to do these kinds of investigations.”

Jones also told me that the department's decision to acquire new body cameras, now with a pre-roll feature that captures 30 seconds of video up to the time when an officer activates it, had a lot to do with the Colby case.

"Certainly that had a lot to do with—that was a very specific example as to where the new technology would have likely captured that shooting itself," Jones said.

According to Jones, Officer Wells was wearing a body camera when fatally shot Colby, but he did not activate it.

Jones said Officer Wells was later “disciplined for failure to activate,” but couldn't share more details because the DA’s investigation of the case.