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| Tawandra Carr, who said she was best friends with Alton Sterling, is comforted as people gather outside the Triple S convenience store in Baton Rouge, La., Wednesday, July 6, 2016. Sterling, 37, was shot and killed outside the store by Baton Rouge police, where he was selling CDs. |
BATON ROUGE,
La. (AP) -- In a swift move by authorities to keep tensions from
boiling over, the U.S. Justice Department launched a civil rights
investigation Wednesday into the video-recorded killing of a black man
who was shot as he scuffled with two white police officers on the
pavement outside a convenience store.
A law
enforcement official said a gun was taken from 37-year-old Alton
Sterling after he was killed early Tuesday in the parking lot where he
regularly sold homemade music CDs from a folding table. The official was
not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of
anonymity.
It was not clear from the murky
cellphone footage whether Sterling had the gun in his hand or was
reaching for it when he was shot. A witness said he saw police pull a
gun from Sterling's pocket after the shooting.
The
shooting in the Louisiana capital - and shocking videos that found
their way all over the internet - set off angry protests in the city's
black community and brought calls for an outside investigation. It came
at a time when law enforcement officers across the country are under
close scrutiny over what some see as indiscriminate use of deadly force
against blacks.
Moving quickly just one day
after the shooting, Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards asked the Justice
Department to take the lead in the investigation.
"I have very serious concerns. The video is disturbing, to say the least," the governor said at a news conference.
Edwards
also met with black community leaders to reassure them about the
investigation and to ask their help in keeping protests peaceful. He
expressed hope that once the community sees that the shooting is "going
to be investigated impartially, professionally and thoroughly" by the
Justice Department, "the tensions will ease."
In
a statement, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called
the shooting a tragedy and said trust between police and the communities
they serve needs to be rebuilt.
"Something is
profoundly wrong when so many Americans have reason to believe that our
country doesn't consider them as precious as others because of the
color of their skin," Clinton said.
Baton
Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. said that Sterling was armed -
Dabadie didn't specify the type of weapon - but that there are still
questions about what happened.
"Like you,
there is a lot that we do not understand. And at this point, like you, I
am demanding answers," Dabadie said, calling the shooting a "horrible
tragedy."
Sterling was confronted by police
after an anonymous caller reported being threatened by someone with gun
outside the store, authorities said.
In the
cellphone video taken by a community activist and posted online, one of
the officers tackled Sterling, and the two officers pinned him to the
pavement.
Someone yelled, "He's got a gun!
Gun!" and one officer pulled his weapon from his holster. After some
shouting, what sounded like a gunshot could be heard. The camera pulled
away before more shots were heard.
The
officers, identified by the chief as Blane Salamoni, a four-year member
of the department, and Howie
Lake II, who has been on the force for
three years, were placed on administrative leave, standard department
procedure.
Lake was involved in another police
shooting in December 2014. He told detectives investigating that
shooting that he fired six or seven times when a suspect refused to drop
his gun, threatened to kill himself and pointed his revolver at
officers. The man was wounded by police.
In the shooting Tuesday, authorities would not say whether one or both officers fired their weapons or how many times.
The
store owner, Abdullah Muflahi, released a video that he said he shot
from a slightly different angle. He said Sterling was not holding a gun
during the shooting but that he saw officers remove one from his pocket
afterward. His video shows an officer reaching into Sterling's pocket to
grab an object.
Muflahi said an officer fired four to six shots into Sterling's chest.
Hundreds
protested Tuesday night, and demonstrators gathered again Wednesday. A
vigil Wednesday
evening drew hundreds of mourners singing, praying and
calling for justice.
uinyetta McMillon, the
mother of Sterling's teenage son, trembled as she read a statement
outside City Hall, where a few dozen protesters and community leaders
had assembled. Her son, Cameron, 15, broke down in tears and was led
away sobbing as his mother spoke.
She described Sterling as "a man who simply tried to earn a living to take care of his children.
"The individuals involved in his murder took away a man with children who depended upon their daddy on a daily basis," she said.
A
cousin of Sterling's, Sharida Sterling, said he had been selling music
there for about six years, often lugging his box of CDs, table and
folding chair on two buses to get to the store.
Sharida
Sterling said that the store management never had any problems with him
but that he was often harassed by police - she suspected because he was
black and a "big guy."
"I don't want them to get away with a slap on the wrist because it could happen to somebody else's brother,"
she said.
In
announcing the Justice Department investigation, the governor was
accompanied by black Democrats from Baton Rouge who praised him and
others for quickly asking the federal government to get involved.
"We
know there's going to be an external investigation. I think it makes
all the difference in the world," said state Sen. Regina Barrow.
Baton
Rouge, a city of about 229,000, is 54 percent black, according to
census data, and more than 25 percent of its people live in poverty.
Police
said they have dash-cam video, bodycam video and store surveillance
footage of the shooting that will be turned over to the Justice
Department.
But Lt. Jonny Dunnam said the
bodycam footage may not be as good as investigators hoped for because
the cameras became dislodged during the scuffle.
That
raises serious questions, said Marjorie Esman, executive director of
the Louisiana ACLU. "Right when they're needed most is when two of them
malfunction in the same way," she said.
The
Justice Department will look into whether the officers willfully
violated Sterling's civil rights through the use of unreasonable or
excessive force.
Similar investigations, which
often take many months, were opened after Michael Brown's shooting in
Ferguson, Missouri, and following Eric Garner's chokehold death in New
York City.
Federal investigators must meet a
high legal burden to bring a civil rights prosecution, establishing that
an officer knowingly used unreasonable force under the circumstances
and did not simply make a mistake or use poor judgment.
The
man who claimed to have shot the first cellphone footage to circulate,
Arthur Reed, said his company, Stop the Killing Inc., makes
documentary-style videos about killings in Baton Rouge.
"We look at ourselves as being a service to the community," Reed said.
