We may never see body camera footage of Keith Lamont Scott's shooting

Body camera footage could answer one of the biggest questions about the death of Keith Lamont Scott at the hands of a North Carolina police officer on Tuesday. But, that footage has yet to be released —and, thanks to a restrictive new state law that takes effect in week's time, it may take a court order to get it seen at all.

Scott, 43, was shot by Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Brentley Vinson on September 20. Police were attempting to serve a warrant on someone else when, they claim, Scott exited his car with a gun. Believing he posed an "imminent deadly threat," they shot him. A woman who claims to be Scott's daughter, however, posted on Facebook that Scott was picking up his son up from a school bus stop, armed with nothing more than a book he was reading as he waited, when police confronted him. Scott's death comes just days after another black man in Tulsa was shot dead by police as, it appeared in footage from the shooting, his hands were up.

Photos from the second night of protests after Keith Lamont Scott's death:

In that case, Tulsa released footage from the incident. Charlotte-Mecklenburg has yet to do this. While Vinson was in plainclothes and not wearing a body camera, other officers on the scene were wearing body cams and there is dashboard camera footage of the incident. Investigators are reviewing that footage, but it could take a lot longer for the general public to have that same chance, if it ever happens. CMPD chief Kerr Putney has said that a gun was found at the scene of the shooting, but he also claims state law prevents him from releasing the video that could either back up CMPD's version of events or directly contradict them.

That isn't quite true. North Carolina does have a controversial state law that would require a court order to release the video. The request can be denied for several reasons and would take time to wind its way through the system. This is a law that Putney himself opposed because, he told the Charlotte Observer back in April, "Here's my issue with giving all discretion to a chief of police: Most human nature is for me to show those videos that present the best image for me. I'm not going to put myself in that position. I am human. I'm going to have other people weigh in."

Now he's saying his hands are tied and he can't release the video because of a law that doesn't actually go into effect until October 1. The North Carolina ACLU, in a statement asking that the footage be released as soon as possible, pointed out that it is still September, and so therefore a law that takes effect in October is not in effect now. The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP has also requested that the footage be released, as has the Charlotte Observer.

But North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, who signed the body camera bill into law (a law that, again, is not yet in effect) told CNN that videos don't "always tell the whole story" and "can also be abused." He also said that he had a duty to protect the constitutional rights of police officers, even though courts have traditionally ruled, when it comes to civilian videos of police interactions, that police officers have no right to privacy when doing their jobs in a public place. As Jezebel noted, when pressed by CNN on the body camera issue, McCrory suddenly had important business elsewhere and quickly ended the conversation.

When an incident with two vastly different narratives is causing social unrest — to the point that a state of emergency has been declared, multiple police officers and civilians have been injured, and one person is on life support due to injuries suffered during protests — it's hard to justify holding back evidence that could clear Vinson and the CMPD's name and end those protests (provided that the police's version of events is what actually happened). North Carolina's restrictive police footage law, once only theoretically problematic and a bar to transparency, has proven to be so in reality. And it isn't even in effect yet.

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