Charlotte police release footage of black man’s killing
CHARLOTTE ( AFP)— Charlotte police have released a footage of the shooting death of a black man during an encounter with officers in the state of North Carolina, after days of protests demanding the videos be made public.
The Tuesday shooting of Keith Lamont Scott has caused several nights of unrest in the southern US city where various residents have called for the police to hand over the footage.
The videos were released to a number of US media and posted online. The first shows Scott getting out of a vehicle and walking backwards as police fire four rounds at him, but it is unclear whether he has a gun in hand. A second clip reveals Scott on the ground in the moments after he was shot as officers surround him.
Police had previously refused to release the dash-cam and body-cam footage, which they said showed that the 43-year-old African-American had posed a threat to officers.
But Charlotte- Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney change his tune Saturday, telling reporters that people “want to see the facts, objective facts. And that’s what we’re presenting.”
“People can interpret anything they want based on one piece of evidence, and I can tell you, I suspect they will, based on the video footage. But what I say is, you have to put all pieces together,” he said.
Scott’s family lawyer Justin Bamberg told a news conference that despite the new videos, it was still impossible to “clearly identify what, if anything, is in his hand, and that has not changed.”