CHARLOTTE, N.C. -Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said he is releasing dash-cam and body-cam video of Tuesday’s fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott , after days of public pressure to review the footage. A cellphone video taken by Mr. Scott’s wife and released Friday didn’t clearly show what Mr. Scott was holding.
Advertisement
Authorities have released footage of a fatal shooting of an African-American man in the U.S. city of Charlotte. It was also determined by police that the gun Mr. Scott possessed was loaded at the time of the encounter with officers. It’s not apparent in the video if he’s holding anything shortly before he was shot.
The videos were released to a number of United States media and posted online. Police blocked off downtown streets late into the night as they had throughout the day, allowing demonstrators to take over roadways without confrontations with vehicles. Officers have said Scott had a gun, according to a police statement. Two plainclothes officers were preparing to arrest someone else when they saw Scott sitting in an SUV, rolling a marijuana blunt, they said.
At a press conference Saturday night, the family said even with this video, there are still many unanswered questions. “You will see what is pertinent, specifically where it starts and where it ends, at the shooting”, Putney said. “He’s passively stepping back”.
Putney told reporters on Saturday that officers saw marijuana and a weapon in Keith Lamont Scott’s vehicle and said, “uh oh, this is a safety issue for us and the public”. “What we know and what you should know about him is that he was an American citizen who deserved better”.
The body cam footage is very shaky and shows an officer with his gun pointing toward Scott’s SVU.
In the dashcam footage, Scott is shown walking backward outside the vehicle when he was struck by police gunfire. Police said a lab analysis showed Scott’s DNA and fingerprints were on the gun. “He appears to have his hands by his side”.
Putney said some video will be released Saturday and more will be released after the prosecutor decides it okay. The governor also said he had been assured by state investigators that the release wouldn’t have an impact on their probe into the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. The officer then moves and Scott is out of view until he is seen lying on the ground.
“Before a firearm can be discharged by an officer and be in compliance with their policy the subject they are trying or about to shoot has to be engaged in aggravated active aggression which they define as the imminent danger of serious bodily injury or death to an officer or another innocent bystander”, Monnett said, ” Their policy talks about the discharge of a weapon not the presence of a weapon”.
Kerr said people can interpret anything they want based on one piece of evidence and suspects that people would based on the video. But the officers were heard opening fire minutes after they shouted commands to Scott to drop a gun.
Relatives and their attorney have also said what they saw on the partial police video footage left them wondering why Scott was killed.
Those commands aren’t heard in the body camera video, which doesn’t have audible sound until after the shooting.
Advertisement
One sign read “Stop police brutality” and another showed a picture of a bloody handprint with the phrase #AMINEXT, a social media tag about the fear of becoming a victim of police violence. Community organizers have said they expected that protests would continue in some form until the videos were released.
