Police won't face charges in Alton Sterling shooting case
- by Santos Harmon
- in Technology
- — Mar 28, 2018
Black Lives Matter activists announced Tuesday that they will hold rallies this week outside her office, and the local NAACP has asked the U.S. Justice Department to launch a federal investigation into the shooting.
In June 2017, Sterling's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, alleging a history of excessive-force and racism toward African-Americans.
"This is white America", Sterling's aunt, Veda Washington, said.
Of those officers, 41 have not been convicted, majority acquitted by juries or during a bench trial, he said. "They said it was justifiable, what happened to Alton was justifiable". "They took a father away", she said.
Democratic Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said state prosecutors had followed the law in evaluating the case. "I pray that God blesses and keeps the Sterling family through his hard time". I know they may not agree with this decision. It was "reasonable" to conclude Sterling was under the influence of drugs during the struggle with the officers "and that contributed to his non-compliance", Landry said.
Landry did not take any questions from reporters.
It was about 12:30 a.m. on July 5, 2016, when someone called Baton Rouge police to report that he was threatened by a man sitting outside the store in a red shirt who was selling CD's.
Officer Blane Salamoni shot and killed Sterling during a struggle outside a Baton Rouge convenience store where the 37-year-old black man was selling homemade CDs. Officer Howie Lake II helped wrestle Sterling to the ground, but didn't fire his gun.
Since 2005, 85 non-federal law enforcement officers - a group that includes police officers, state troopers and deputy sheriffs - have been arrested for murder or manslaughter after fatally shooting someone while on-duty, according to Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Bowling Green State University in OH, who studies arrests of officers and has kept data since that year. Two cellphone videos of the shooting quickly spread on social media, leading to large protests.
YouTube Banning How-To Videos On Assembling Guns
The rally was planned by survivors of the Florida high school shooting of February 14 that left 17 people dead. The National Shooting Sports Foundation called the YouTube policy "troubling".
It was also captured on body camera and convenience store surveillance.
Federal authorities opened a civil rights investigation immediately after the shooting and released their findings in May 2017.
Baton Rouge officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake responded to the scene, and said they believed Sterling was armed with a gun and was resisting arrest.
Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is expected to announce his decision about potential state criminal charges against two police officers in the Alton Sterling case. As a convicted felon, Sterling could not legally carry a gun.
Salamoni then tried to grab Sterling's right hand while Lake pulled his gun and yelled at Sterling to not move. They reported that Sterling had a gun in his pocket.
The Tuesday revelation came as Landry announced there would be no criminal charges against the two officers in the Alton Sterling's 2016 death.
The Justice Department's decision not to pursue charges in the Sterling case marked the first time under Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the department declined to prosecute a police officer investigated for wrongdoing in a high-profile case.
The two officers are on paid administrative leave, Salamoni's lawyer said. Critics expressed frustration at another police-involved shooting in which a Black man was executed without so much as a trial, calling it just another example of rampant police brutality in the United States.
