9 protesters hurt, 44 injured as Charlotte protests continue
At least 9 protesters have been injured and 44 arrested during a second day of demonstrations against US police brutality in Charlotte, North Carolina, the city’s police chief says.
Charlotte Police Chief Kerr Putney said Thursday that 5 officers have also been injured during the violent protests.
Thousands of enraged African Americans flooded the streets of the city on Wednesday to denounce the police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man who was killed on Tuesday night.
The peaceful protests soon escalated to a violent encounter between angry protesters and police, forcing North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to declare a state of emergency.
The governor said in a statement that the state’s National Guard and the state police will join the city police force to control the unrest.
The situation became more chaotic when one of the protesters was shot and later succumbed to his wounds at a hospital.
Putney said Thursday that Scott’s shooting video will not be published and only his family may watch how officers gunned him down.
He warned that the video will not provide “definitive visual evidence” that Scott pointed a gun at officers when they shot him.
However, he said there were other evidence and witness accounts that support the police narrative that Scott was shot only after he refused to drop his weapon.
There are conflicting reports about whether Scott had a gun or a book in his hands.
Charlotte Mayor Jennifer Roberts had told CNN earlier that she will review the available body cam and dash cam videos of the office-involved shooting.
However, according to Putney, Officer Brentley Vinson—who shot Scott—did not have a body cam on him during the shooting.
North Carolina has recently passed a law that bans the public release of police video from body or dashboard cameras with limited exceptions.
The shooting death of Scott happened at a time when anti-police sentiment is already high across the US due to a surge of unjustified killings of unarmed African Americans over the past few months.
