Early Saturday evening, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department released body camera and dash cam footage of last week’s shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott that has been the catalyst for riots in the North Carolina community.
“The body worn camera illustrates the footage from the moment it was turned on until officers began rendering first aid to Mr. Scott.” the department said of the body cam footage taken at the scene.
With the release of the dash-cam footage, the department released this statement: “The dash-cam footage is from the time in which the officer operating the car with the dash-cam video arrives on the scene until officers began rendering first aid to Mr. Scott.”
#BREAKING: This is the dash cam footage from the shooting of #KeithScott https://t.co/k5FE67n5K3 pic.twitter.com/GqIIP3PDm7
— CBS News (@CBSNews) September 24, 2016
Dash cam footage via CBS News Twitter account
At the same time, the department released photos of the weapon Scott was holding, and the holster and drugs it said he possessed at the time of the shooting.
#BREAKING: @CMPD releases photos of gun, ankle holster and blunt they say #KeithLamontScott had on him at time of encounter #Charlotte pic.twitter.com/5UCkGJPRR4
— Mark Davenport WBTV (@TheDavenReport) September 24, 2016
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department also released a statement saying that during the course of serving a warrant, two plain-clothes officers observed Scott drive up, park his SUV followed in short order of him “rolling what they believed to be a marijuana ‘blunt.'” At the time the officers “did not consider Mr. Scott’s drug activity to be a priority … and they resumed the warrant operation.”
But Scott’s activity suddenly became a priority when one of the officers “observed Mr. Scott hold a gun up.” They then left the scene and donned apparel “and equipment that would clearly identify them as police officers.”
The two were joined by a uniformed officer driving a marked police vehicle, who approached and attempted to breach Scott’s SUV. At that point Scott exited the vehicle with his gun in his hand and ignored repeated commands to drop his weapon, according to the department’s statement, which continued:
Homicide Unit Detectives interviewed multiple independent civilian witnesses at the scene and at police headquarters. Those witnesses confirmed that officers gave numerous loud verbal commands for Mr. Scott to drop the weapon and also confirmed that at no time did Mr. Scott comply with their commands.
A lab analysis conducted of the gun crime scene investigators recovered at the scene revealed the presence of Mr. Scott’s DNA and his fingerprints on the gun. It was also determined that the gun Mr. Scott possessed was loaded at the time of the encounter with the officers. The investigation also revealed that Mr. Scott was wearing an ankle holster at the time of the event.
Although it’s difficult to make out a weapon in Scott’s hand in either of the videos, you can clearly hear officers tell Scott in a loud, authoritative voice to “drop the gun” at least eight times before gunfire is heard.”
Earlier in the day a department employee live-tweeted, then deleted, the following:
Because they were deleted, conspiracy theorists thought it amounted to a police cover-up of some kind. The department later reported:
An employee, uncomfortable with decision to live tweet, deleted all of @cmpd’s tweets. That should not have happened. Retweeting them now. https://t.co/bLBveka06E
— CMPD News (@CMPD) September 24, 2016
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