The family of Black Charlotte man Keith Lamont Scott will have to wait for another form of justice after it was announced that the officer who killed him in September acted within the scope of the law. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Officer Brently Vinson will not face charges, a move that has caused users on Twitter to react in kind.
The New York Times reports:
A Charlotte, N.C., police officer will not face charges in the fatal shooting in September of a black resident, Keith Lamont Scott, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
The Sept. 20 shooting of Mr. Scott, who the police said had a handgun when he was killed, set off days of unrest in North Carolina’s largest city and led to immense public pressure on the police to release dashboard and body camera recordings, which did not prove that Mr. Scott had been armed.
Still, the decision not to prosecute the officer, Brentley Vinson, who is black, was not a surprise. In September, the chief of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, Kerr Putney, said that the officer was “absolutely not being charged by me at this point.”
A statement was released by Scott’s family thanking Mecklenburg County District Attorney Andrew Murray and other related officials for their handling of the case. They asked that the protests that have taken place across the city of Charlotte remain peaceful. There are storm warnings in the region, but it hasn’t deterred crowds from gathering.
See the following pages for reactions to the news that Officer Brentley Vinson will not face charges in the killing of Keith Lamont Scott.
https://twitter.com/xmanwalton/status/804129796133371906
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Photo: screen cap
