Videos fail to end furor over shooting
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Under mounting pressure from politicians, community leaders and boisterous protesters who have brought this city’s main business district to a nearstandstill, the Charlotte police chief on Saturday released body and dashboard camera videos of the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a black resident here.
While they do not show everything that happened at the scene, the two released videos appear to show Scott exiting a white SUV and backing away from it with his hands at his sides. He did not appear to be acting in a threatening or erratic manner.
Police said they had recovered a loaded gun with Scott’s DNA on it and that he wore an ankle holster. But they did not reveal where they recovered the gun.
It was clear from the
two angles that he had nothing in his right hand. It also was unclear what, if anything, Scott, who was righthanded, had in his left hand. After Scott was shot multiple times and fell to the ground, his moans could be heard as officers handcuffed him.
Police also revealed for the first time that officers had decided to confront Scott, 43, in the parking lot of his apartment complex Tuesday because they noticed, as they were preparing to serve a warrant on another person, that he was rolling a marijuana cigarette inside his SUV — and had observed him “hold a gun up,” according to a news release.
Chief Kerr Putney of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said that, since Scott was in possession of both marijuana and a handgun, it raised a safety issue officers felt compelled to confront.
“What we are releasing are the objective facts,” Putney said at a news conference.
Still, he added that neither the videos nor other evidence he intended to make public provided a definitive answer to all the questions in the case.
“I stand behind the truth,” Putney said. “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. ‘I don’t see anything there’
At a news conference about an hour after the release of the videos, lawyers for the Scott family said his relatives were pleased with the decision but also said the videos raised more questions than they answered.
One of the lawyers, Justin Bamberg, said the family stood by its assertion that Scott was not armed and that he never acted in a threatening manner.
“When I look at the dash-cam footage, I don’t see anything there, in my opinion, that would lead to him losing his life,” Bamberg said.
Protesters on Saturday were skeptical that marijuana possession, which has been decriminalized in many communities, should have led to a fatal encounter. The officer who shot Scott was also black, police officials have said.
Greg Farmer, 25, who has been protesting since Scott’s death, said Saturday that even if Scott did have marijuana and a gun, police should not have killed him.
“Even if they thought he was smoking weed, why in any world would that warrant him being gunned down?” said Farmer, who owns a food truck and a handyman business in Charlotte.
The protesters, who have taken to the streets since Tuesday in large numbers — sometimes peacefully and sometimes not — have made “Release the tapes” their signature chant and most pointed demand, and have accused Putney of obscuring the details of the shooting. Anger, frustration remain
And yet, for a number of reasons, it seems likely that the release of the two videos, and the new information about the case, will do little to quell what has become a roiling national debate over whether it was necessary to fatally shoot Scott, one of a number of African-American men who have died at the hands of police in recent months.
The frustration and anger were evident before Putney had finished his news conference, which protesters were listening to on a loudspeak- er at a park in the Uptown area of Charlotte.
Around 4:30 p.m., a protester announced to some cheers that there had been an update about the release of the police videos. But that cautious optimism turned to anger about 10 minutes later as protesters learned police would not be releasing all of the video footage.
Putney said that while the information being released constituted “the most complete puzzle that we can without trying the case out in public,” he said some unreleased videos showed only people driving to the scene.
He also said more footage would be released upon completion of an independent inquiry being conducted by the state Bureau of Investigation “and there has been a definitive decision on the part of the prosecutor.” Release of all video sought
The chief, as well as other officials in North Carolina, previously resisted demands to release the footage because they said it could undercut the state’s investigation, which is reviewing the shooting at the request of Scott’s family.
But by Saturday afternoon, word had begun to spread through Charlotte that the chief had agreed to release the footage. During a news conference at a West Charlotte police station, as rifle-bearing members of the National Guard stood outside, the chief insisted that his decision had not been influenced by political pressure, nor by the release Friday of a video recorded by Scott’s wife.
The chief said he believed that releasing what he described as “objective facts” that were central to the circumstances of the shooting would not “taint” the state’s inquiry.
William Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, said in an interview Saturday that the release of the two videos was not sufficient. He called for the full release of all police videos of the incident, and demanded a federal investigation.
He noted that neither he nor anyone else in the public was in possession of all of the facts in the case. But he also said that neither the possession of marijuana nor the possession of a gun should warrant “a death sentence.”