The department shared grainy surveillance footage of the attempted robbery Wednesday morning on social media, more than a week after the incident took place, in an attempt to get further leads on the incident.
The news crew was interviewing Guillermo Cespedes, the head of the Oakland Department of Violence Prevention, shortly after Oakland police chief LeRonne Armstrong decried a reallocation of an extra $18 million away from police. Those funds will be put into the Department of Violence Prevention.
The footage sheds further light on the altercation, which takes place within a matter of seconds, from the initial hold-up to the news crew’s hired security guard holding up his own weapon and forcing the attempted robbers to flee.
“This is a brazen attempted armed robbery that took place in the afternoon in our busy downtown,” said an Oakland police spokesperson in a statement. “We encourage our community to provide any information that would lead to the identification and arrest of those responsible for this crime.”
This police-released footage follows a brief, incomplete video shared by NBC Bay Area (and later released by outlets like Mediaite) of the incident from the news crew’s vantage point.