Police on Saturday afternoon finally released video footage of the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott and the dramatic images are more notable for what they don’t show: there is no clearly visible gun and Scott doesn’t raise any kind of weapon toward the officers. The snippet of body cam and dash cam footage that police released Saturday afternoon does show however that an officer repeatedly told Scott to drop his weapon before opening fire.
Just like Scott’s family had described, the dash cam video shows that Scott was walking backward slowly away from his SUV with his hands down at the time when four shots can be heard and he falls to the ground. Scott’s wife can be heard in the dash cam video telling officers that he doesn’t have a gun, as had been heard in the cell phone video the family released a day earlier.
The body cam footage is very shaky and shows an officer with his gun pointing toward Scott’s SVU. The officer then moves to the other side of the SUV and Scott can be seen with his hands at his side standing outside his vehicle. Scott then goes out of the frame and when he is seen again, he has already been shot and is on the ground.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Kerry Putney said he had decided to release the videos after receiving assurances that it would not impact the ongoing investigations.
“Doing so prior to this point would have had a negative impact on the investigation,” he said. Still, there’s more video out there. Putney said that the police was only releasing “specific footage” that provides “visuals of what transpired.” So there is other footage that will be released at a later date although Putney insisted the video that was released include all the “pertinent” parts.
Protesters had been calling for the tapes to be released in the days following the shooting. The decision to actually release some of the footage was made a day after Hillary Clinton called for police to publish the video footage “without delay.”
In addition to the video snippets, police also released a statement laying out what led ot the shooting as well as photos of the handgun and “blunt” they say they recovered at the scene.
The police statement lays out the timeline of what happened, making it clear that it was Scott’s possession of marijuana that pushed the officers to escalate the situation once they saw he also had a weapon. The statement also confirms earlier reports that Scott’s DNA and fingerprints were found on the loaded gun that was at the scene. The full statement is below, as published by WCCB.
