Milwaukie body cam released in transport death

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) -- The investigation into the death of a 26-year-old man during his transport by Milwaukie police from a hospital remains active and ongoing. But late Friday afternoon Milwaukie police officials released the body worn camera video from one of the officers.

Jean Descamps became unresponsive as he was being transported to a behavioral health center by officers from the Milwaukie Police Department on December 13. Officers said they began CPR but Descamps couldn’t be resuscitated and was declared dead.

Despite the ongoing nature of the investigation, Milwaukie PD said they completed reviewing and redacting the body camera footage and wanted to release the body camera footage of Officer Timothy Cleary because of the "significant public interest in the case" and their "commitment to the highest level of transparency within and beyond our community."

Watch: Body camera footage related to the death of Jean Descamps in Milwaukie

The body camera footage is nearly 2 hours long. Around 34 minutes into the footage, officers are inside the hospital discussing the case with hospital staff. It is not clear who was talking in this exchange:

"Why is he being released?" an officer asked.

"He walked in here. …"

"We have no place to take him. (crosstalk)," the officer said.

"We had him set up with a shelter, a cab to take him to the shelter and he didn't want to leave. He wanted to stay here all night. So that's how that happened."

"It's not really a medical problem."

"It's not a police problem, either. It's really not," the officer said.

"It's a community problem."

The Medical Examiner said the cause of death was likely related to a drug overdose with “contributing natural causes.” The final determination will be made from a pending toxicology report.

Statement from Providence Hospital

Shortly after Milwaukie Police Department released their body cam footage, Providence issued this statement:

Providence is sorry about the death of Jean Descamps, and we extend our apologies and sympathy to his family and friends for their loss. In this case, we fell short of our goal of providing safe, reliable, compassionate care to our patient.

The Milwaukie Police Department video is difficult to watch, and Providence is committed to doing all we can to learn from this and improve our response to our most vulnerable patients.

Immediately after we learned of the death, Providence Milwaukie Hospital began a thorough internal review of our processes and procedures. We are working with our colleagues at Oregon Emergency Physicians – the organization that provides the doctors for our emergency department – as well as the Oregon Health Authority. Providence leaders have already taken action, and are identifying additional actions we need to take so that people in our community can be confident in the care we provide.

Finally, on behalf of all our caregivers at Providence Milwaukie, we give you our promise: We will do better.

KOIN 6 News will have more information later in the night.