A day after North Carolina’s governor declared a state of emergency amid violent protests following the police killing of a black man, Charlotte’s police chief said Thursday the agency will not publicly release video footage of Keith Lamont Scott’s death.
A black officer from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department killed Scott, 43, on Tuesday outside an apartment complex while serving a warrant on somebody else. The officer, who has been placed on administrative leave, said Scott had a handgun as he got out of a vehicle and did not follow orders to drop it. Friends and family members maintain Scott was carrying a book—an assertion flatly denied by Kerr Putney, the police chief. At a press conference, he said the authorities retrieved a handgun Scott “was holding in his hand when he got out of the vehicle.”
Putney told the news conference that he’ll only show the footage to the victim’s family, not the public.
