They didn’t know it was on tape delay until that day?! Who the hell is responsible for putting it on tape delay!? Why the hell would they do that?! The Truth is probably worse than any conspiracy theory we can imagine.
There was no tape delay. The cameras are recorded. When the deputy asked the office staff to check the cameras, they rewound the tape a ways as they would have done if there’d been an incident like a fight that was already over. They then started playing the tape back. That’s the normal way those systems are used. What he wanted them to do was look at the real-time feed. Deputies seeing the video didn’t realize it was a tape playback.