Charlotte police will release video from Keith Lamont Scott shooting
Charlotte police said Saturday they would release some of the bodycam and dashcam footage and other information related to the fatal shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, bowing to public pressure after initially refusing to share any video.
"I have decided that we're at a stage where I can release additional information without adversely impacting [the State Bureau of Investigation's] investigation," Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Kerr Putney said at a news conference Saturday afternoon. "Prior to this point, it would have had an impact."
The videos will be released shortly, Putney added.
The reversal comes a day after NBC News obtained cellphone video taken by Scott's wife, Rakeyia, through a family attorney in which she begs with officers not to shoot her husband as they surround his pickup truck. It does not show the shooting itself.
Related: Keith Scott's Family Urges Police to Release Videos
Protesters, who have held nightly demonstrations in North Carolina's largest city since Scott was shot by officers on Tuesday, have demanded police release bodycam and dashcam footage of 43-year-old Scott's final moments.
But the State Bureau of Investigation, which took over the case, said earlier it wouldn't release police video for fear of compromising its review.
utney said Saturday that now that he is certain releasing the video wouldn't affect the investigation, he decided to do so because he felt that it was "in the community's best interest."
He also told reporters Scott was in possession of marijuana when officers approached him. That discovery, plus the weapon police say he had, made him an imminent threat, Putney said.
Putney before Saturday said police wouldn't release its videos, although the ones he watched didn't show "absolute, definitive, visual evidence" that Scott brandished a weapon at the officers.
The Scott family was permitted to view the police video Thursday. Family attorney Justin Bamberg said after viewing it that "it is impossible to discern from the videos what, if anything, Mr. Scott is holding in his hands."
Related: Why Viewing Bodycam Video Isn't Easy Under New N.C. Law
Police were at the condominium complex where Scott was sitting in his car to serve a warrant on someone else.
They said they saw Scott holding a gun as he exited his truck and then return to his car before he exited again. At that point, police said, they shot Scott after he became threatening and refused to listen to their commands to put the weapon down. But some in Scott's family insisted he didn't have a weapon.
"He doesn't have a gun. He has a TBI [traumatic brain injury]," Rakeyia Scott says in the video that she took. "He's not going to do anything to you guys. He just took his medicine."
Brentley Vinson, the plainclothes officer who fired the fatal shots at Scott, was not wearing a bodycam, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police. But three other officers who were at the scene were.
Earlier Saturday, the NAACP in Charlotte joined the calls for police to share the footage, calling it "video that is ours."
See photos from the protest of the police shooting:
