The disturbing video emerged as unrest in Charlotte carries on into a fourth night of protesting and pressure mounts from both local and national officials for police to release dashcam footage of the shooting. Authorities said a black police officer fatally shot Scott, a black man and a father of seven, in an apartment complex parking lot as officers looked for another man named in a warrant they were trying to serve.
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Police said an officer shot Scott on Tuesday after he failed to heed commands to drop a gun.
While the news of excessive use of force against the black community in the United States had for always been part of the American life, the death of Scott once again highlighted the profound distrust among the black community of the law enforcement officials supposed to protect them.
Protesters have sought the release of police footage of the shooting earlier this week of Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer.
Police said Scott had a gun as he exited his vehicle, and that Officer Brentley Vinson shot him after Scott did not comply with officers’ commands to drop the weapon.
On Thursday, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said the video would not be released anytime soon.
However, he refused to release the footage, arguing that the release of the footage could inflame the situation as the city was already on edge after three consecutive nights of mass protests against police brutality.
The wife Keith Lamont Scott has released a shocking video showing her husband’s last few moments.
It was not just Bamberg that appeared to be uncertain what the police videos might have pointed out.
Justin Bamberg, who, along with Eduardo Curry, is representing the family, said in an interview Friday that the video did not prove that the shooting was either justified or unjustified.
That differed from his message a day earlier, when the chief said the public shouldn’t expect the videos’ release.
For members of the black community, the contradictory accounts of the shooting was not something that struck them as surprising, and with frustration and anger, they took to the street. “I know the expectation that video footage can be the panacea, and I can tell you that is not quite the case”.
Critics have accused Charlotte authorities of a lack of transparency, compared with the swift action taken after a police shooting in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a white officer has been charged.
Charlotte has been rocked by three nights of violence-marred protests, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency in the southern USA city. Mayor Jennifer Roberts told CNN on Friday that the Democratic presidential nominee should hold off coming to Charlotte and let the city recuperate from days of protest after the shooting of a black man by police.
“You want to be able to trust the officer”.
“You get into privacy rights”.
It was not the first time US police was allegedly involved in covering up shootings of the black.
Mr Scott was the 214th black person killed by United States police this year out of a total of 821, according to monitoring site Mapping Police Violence. It has said it does not support the police’s assertion that he was a threat to officers.
Clinton said Wednesday that the shootings had added two more names “to a long list of African-Americans killed by police officers”.
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Lynch was not the only one to speak out.
