A usually calm town in North Carolina is still simmering as it has been rocked with anxiety and tension after a fatal police shooting last month.
The shooting of another unarmed Black man, Keith Scott, sparked intense debate in Charlotte, and the release of video footage from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has left more questions than answers.
Scott died Sept. 20 when he was shot by police officers while waiting for his son to get out of school. Officials have reported that Scott, 43, father of four, was approached because of suspected marijuana possession. Police have also reported that Scott had a gun, thus the reason for his shooting, which conflicts with his family’s claim that he did not have a weapon at the time of his death.
The people of Charlotte had an immediate response to the shooting, with protesters marching every night since Scott’s death, many of them students.
“We had a citywide ‘curfew’ because of everything,” said Adina Houston, senior class president at UNC Charlotte. “The big thing is the peaceful protests uptown; they will start arresting us at midnight, so it will be interesting to see what happens.”
UNC Charlotte, which has a student body comprising more than 60 percent Caucasian students compared with 17 percent African-American students, has been an epicenter for the city’s youth to demonstrate their opinions about police brutality and a need for change.
Letaeja Fitzgerald, a junior at UNCC, said the protests were empowering. “The death of Keith Scott really hit home for us. It’s a completely different feeling going from reading about it or seeing it on social media, to having it happen right outside of your campus,” said Fitzgerald, who is minoring in criminal justice. “Many of us felt voiceless and powerless, but the protests have given us an opportunity to express ourselves.”
More and more students are turning into activists in light of the incident. The protests have been mostly peaceful and did result in the release of body camera and dashboard camera footage of the shooting from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Police officials were pressured to release the videos after Rakeyia Scott, Keith Scott’s wife, who was present at the time of the shooting, released her own graphic video of the incident, which she recorded on her phone.
Although the footage was a start to obtaining a better understanding of what happened, the videos did not clearly show the presence of a gun at the time of the fatal shot.
Police have shown no signs of releasing the remaining videos, and videos from police will now be harder to obtain. A new law signed into action will severely limit public access to police video footage by classifying the type of material as a “confidential personnel record,” giving access only to those pictured or heard in footage, or their relatives, according to The Atlantic.
But protesters in Charlotte have been relentless in their search for justice, chanting, “No tapes, no peace,” while marching through the city’s uptown. Marchers have also called for a reform of the police department.
“Officers need to better evaluate the situations before they pull the trigger. Perhaps they need better training or different forms of training,” said Osvaldo Hernandez, an alum of UNCC and a current employee of the college. “My experience here in Charlotte over the past seven years have been the best years of my life, and protesting was a good eye-opener for our city to serve as a reminder of [how] tolerant we are becoming with all these shootings by police that are becoming way too common now. There are days where [I] worry about myself because I am a person of color, Latino.”
The Student Union at UNC Charlotte staged a lie-in just one day after the shooting, reportedly protesting “a misuse of power by the police nationwide” according to WX12 News. Similar protests have also been held at North Carolina State University in Raleigh and University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
“I think having an open and uncomfortable conversation needs to happen—there needs to be some attempt at reform with the use of deadly force in America,” said Javon Arlee, a student at UNCC majoring in communication. “We cannot continue to live in an environment of fear from not only civilians but the authorities who are tasked to protest us.”