SHOOT VID BARED
Gun issue still unclear in NC slay by cops
Officials in protest-wracked Charlotte, NC, have released the first police videos of last Tuesday’s controversial shooting, and — as promised — the footage fails to answer the prime question on everyone’s minds: Did Keith Lamont Scott have a gun?
But while it remains unclear what is in Scott’s hand at the moment of his death, the new police footage does show that Scott did not raise his hands into anything resembling a firing gesture before cops opened fire.
Still, police are maintaining that they were justified in the shooting of Scott, whose final moments they described Saturday in their fullest narrative yet.
When two plainclothes cops observed Scott, 43, in his car, rolling what looked like a marijuana cigarette and holding up a gun, “officers decided to take enforcement action for public safety concerns,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police said in a case update.
The update included three crime-scene photos: of a gun, a bloody holster and the partially smoked marijuana joint that first drew the officers’ attention when they arrived in the neighborhood.
When they saw the gun and the apparent drugs, “officers departed the immediate area to outfit themselves with marked duty vests and equipment that would clearly identify them as police officers,” the police update said.
“Upon returning, the officers again witnessed Mr. Scott in possession of a gun. The officers immediately identified themselves as police officers and gave clear, loud and repeated verbal commands to drop the gun. Mr. Scott refused to follow the officers’ repeated verbal commands,” the update said.
“A uniformed officer in a marked patrol vehicle arrived to assist the officers. The uniformed officer utilized his baton to attempt to breach the front passenger window in an effort to arrest Mr. Scott.
“Mr. Scott then exited the vehicle with the gun and backed away from the vehicle while continuing to ignore officers’ repeated loud verbal commands to drop the gun.”
Scott was then shot by Officer Brentley Vinson.
Some witnesses have countered that Scott had a book, not a gun.
In an earlier video released by his wife, she can be heard telling police that he did not have a weapon.
But Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said Scott “absolutely” had a handgun, and that the weapon recovered at the scene had Scott’s DNA and fingerprints on it.
The audio of the new footage clearly has cops repeatedly shouting, “Drop the gun!” as they surrounded Scott’s SUV.
The footage was released as hundreds marched through the streets of downtown Charlotte in the fifth straight day of protests.
At a press conference, Putney said not all of the footage recorded during the incident would be released, and he acknowledged that nothing he was putting out in the public was definitive on its own.
“The footage itself will not create in anyone’s mind absolute certainty,” he said. “You have to make your own judgments.”
The case has become an issue in the presidential race.
Hillary Clinton, who supported protesters’ calls for the videos to be released, postponed a scheduled Sunday visit to Charlotte at the request of the Democratic mayor, who said candidate visits would strain security resources. Donald Trump’s planned Tuesday visit was also put off.
North Carolina is one of several battleground states in the presidential election, with polls showing the race there a dead heat.