Chief won’t release shooting video
1 killed in Charlotte protests over Keith Lamont Scott’s death at the hands of police.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Charlotte’s police chief said Thursday that he had no intention of releasing video footage of the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, whose death sparked unrest that left more than a dozen police officers and civilians injured and one civilian dead.
“Transparency is in the eye of the beholder,” Chief Kerr Putney told reporters. “If you think, ‘I say we should display a victim’s worst day for public consumption,’ that is not the transparency I’m speaking of.”
Police have said that Scott, a 43-year-old black man, emerged from his vehicle with a gun and refused orders to drop it; Scott’s family members contend that he was not armed.
Activists have demanded police make the footage public. The city convulsed with violence for a second night Wednesday as protesters waded into the streets and police in riot gear fired tear gas. One man was shot and critically wounded.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who had already declared a state of emergency, announced Thursday that he had initiated efforts to deploy the National Guard and state troopers. By early Thursday evening, military Humvees were parked in the streets near businesses.
Many businesses remained closed Thursday as major corporations — Wells Fargo and Bank of America among them — urged employees to stay away from their downtown offices. Cleanup crews and volunteers worked overnight to board up damaged buildings and sweep shards of glass from sidewalks.
Meanwhile, a North Carolina congressman apologized Thursday for a statement he made in an interview with the BBC, in which he said the violence in Charlotte stemmed from protesters who “hate white people because white people are successful, and they’re not.”
Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican whose district includes parts of the city beset by protests, said later it was his “anguish” over the violence that led him to respond “in a way that I regret.”
Sharply different narratives have emerged, not only of the original police shooting, but of the protests it sparked.
Police said one protester was shot Wednesday and died the next day, according to the Associated Press, which identified him as 26year-old Justin Carr.
The city said on its Twitter account that the victim was shot by another civilian. Several protesters, however, said they saw police fire rubber bullets that hit the man.
Two officers were left with minor eye injuries, three officers were treated for heat-related conditions, and eight civilians were injured, Putney said.
Police arrested 44 protesters on charges of failure to disperse, assault, and breaking and entering.
The state Bureau of Investigation is looking into Scott’s shooting to determine whether to file charges against the officer who shot him.
Authorities did allow Scott’s family to view two police videos of the shooting captured by a body camera and a dashboard camera, according to Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the family.
In a statement Thursday, he said the videos showed that Scott calmly followed orders to exit his vehicle and that it was impossible to see whether he was holding anything.
He was shot while slowly walking backward with his hands at his side, the statement said.
Bamberg urged police to make the videos public.
Scott did not own a handgun, Bamberg said.
Putney said the police video did not give him “absolute definitive visual evidence” that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun. But the “totality of all other evidence” supported “the version of the truth” that the police had given about Scott’s death, he said.
“There’s your truth, my truth and the truth. Some people have already made up their minds about what happened,” he said.
President Obama called Mayor Jennifer Roberts on Wednesday, as well as the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., where police shot an unarmed black man last week, to offer his condolences and guidance, the White House said in a statement.
Protests began quietly Wednesday afternoon in downtown Charlotte, with chants of “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace,” but escalated as demonstrators moved into a central commercial district.
As crowds amassed near an Omni hotel, police in riot gear surrounded the protesters, some of whom began knocking over pots and plants along the hotel driveway and trying to get inside.
Police said officers did not fire shots. Through much of the evening they ordered protesters to back off, shouting: “Lives are in danger!” But some continued to throw bottles, and looters broke windows and ransacked the Charlotte Hornets store at Spectrum Center, a block from the site of Wednesday night’s shooting.
Windows were smashed at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, the Charlotte Observer newspaper offices and the Westin Hotel.
One demonstrator held a sign reading, “End statesanctioned murder.” On a street corner, a couple snapped selfies, while a man shouted, “Jesus saves!” Nonlethal grenades could be heard in the background.
By Thursday morning, the Charlotte Area Transit System, which had closed its downtown transportation hub and shut down bus and streetcar routes during the violence Wednesday, had restored services.
In the shooting Tuesday that set off the protests, Scott was confronted by police outside a Charlotte condominium complex, where officers had gone to serve an arrest warrant on another person.
“The individuals who saw this maintain that they saw him holding a book,” Bamberg said. “There are other witnesses who say he didn’t have anything. You have law enforcement who says he had a gun.
“Part of the problem here is that any time these things happen everybody has different viewpoints. Our goal is get down to the truth to make sure all of the facts come out.”
Brentley Vinson, the officer police identified as having shot Scott, is also black. He has been placed on administrative leave, a routine procedure following an officer-involved shooting.