The Shooting of Keith Lamont Scott
On 20 September 2016, African American Keith Lamont Scott was shot and killed by also African American Officer Brentley Vinson, who was at the apartments where the incident occurred for an outstanding warrant issue not involving Scott. Officer Vinson saw what he believed to be Scott rolling a marijuana blunt, but decided to stay at the task at hand, the outstanding warrant issue, until he noticed Scott soon after holding a gun up, giving the officers probable cause to arrest him for the drug violation and investigate the gun possession.
Officer Vinson and the plain clothes officer he was with then left to get ‘marked duty vests’ that would identify them as police officers, and returned to the scene to investigate. Scott still held the loaded gun in his possession and the officers gave clear, loud, and repeated verbal commands for Scott to drop his gun. He did not, but instead got out of the car with the gun, and continued to ignore commands to drop his gun, thus perceiving Scott’s actions and movements as an ‘imminent physical threat’ to the officers, Vinson fired his weapon – hitting and killing Scott. Officers “immediately rendered first aid and requested Medic to respond to the scene”. The shooting occurred just before 4pm ET.
The situation is certainly sad for the wife and daughter of Scott, who was up to no good, but certainly not worth failing to obey the officers commands resulting in an elevated situation that cost him his life, gave media and the shadow government a scapegoat for the racial agenda, thus resulting in rioting and looting, eventually the death of another young man and many more injuries.
Media Propaganda
The media ran, as they usually do, with a false narrative following the shooting. Blue Lives Matter, a police group, called out CNN for allegedly editing the shooting footage to fuel their anti-police agenda.
The narrative pushed by the media in the beginning was that Scott was unarmed (false) and sitting quietly reading a book (false, no book was found at the scene) when he was shot by officers. Blue Lives Matter alleged that CNN helped this along when they edited out the final “drop the gun” from the video footage of the shooting.
Blue Lives Matter, which consists of active or retired law enforcement officers, released a statement about their allegations against CNN:
The editing was clearly intended to give viewers the impression that Scott wasn’t armed. By intentionally excluding information to promote the false narrative that the officer-involved shooting of Keith Scott was unjustified, CNN directly contributed towards inciting violence and destruction in the Charlotte riots.
The statement continued: “Innocent citizens were hurt during the Charlotte riots, but editing like this also incites violence against police officers long after the riots are over.”
Scott’s widow, Rakeyia Scott, claimed in the video she took of the incident that her husband didn’t have a weapon. Police video told a much different story.
In the video released by the police, an officer can be heard shouting, “Gun. Gun. Drop the gun.” Scott can also be seen wearing an ankle holster, which officers later confirmed. Officers can be seen crouched with their weapons drawn as Scott emerged from the vehicle and backed away from the police.
According to the police, Scott was not “reading a book” as his widow alleged and the media ran with reckless abandon without proof, but was actually rolling a joint. Officers also recovered a stolen, loaded gun at the scene.
Rakeyia Scott yelled, “Don’t shoot him, don’t shoot him,” and “He didn’t do anything,” as police yelled for Keith Scott to drop his weapon twelve times in 38 seconds, according to Fox News. Blue Lives Matter added, “There are consequences to editing video like this, and it may cost more officers their lives.”
Provocateurs, Rioting & Looting
The Charlotte Observer reports that protest began peacefully:
At about 4:30 Wednesday, a group of two dozen protesters stood in front of the Bank of America Tower at Trade and Tryon streets. They silently stood and held signs reading “Black Lives Matter” and “Stop Killing Us.”
Andrew Monroe said the protest was organized informally by a group of black professionals. “What we want to do is show we’re not dangerous,” he said. “We want to show the world it’s not thugs out here.” Monroe said black people deserve to be safe in the streets and don’t feel that way in the spate of recent police shootings. Across town at UNC Charlotte, students gathered at the Union and laid down in protest.
It noted that the violence began around 8:30 p.m.:
Protests had remained peaceful in uptown on Wednesday, after the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott. But the scene turned chaotic after 8:30 p.m., when protesters went from Marshall Park to the EpiCentre dining and entertainment complex and the Omni on Trade Street.
The demonstration then refused to disperse and grew more violent. Police attempted to use tear gas to end the protest, as North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory declared a state of emergency and deployed the National Guard and the State Highway Patrol to assist local law enforcement.As seems to always be the case when rioting meets the government agenda, rioting is okay, promoted, and/or downplayed as peaceful. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said this following the night of rioting and looting:
Now, most of the demonstrators gathered last night were exercising their constitutional and protected right to peaceful protest in order to raise issues and create change.
I wonder how much she would support the constitutional rights of anti-government protesters?
What could be in similar fashion to the Ferguson Riots where provocateurs were bused in to incite violence and rioting, Todd Walther, spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Fraternal Order of Police told CNN’s Erin Burnett:
“This is not Charlotte that’s out here. These are outside entities that are coming in and causing these problems. These are not protesters, these are criminals.”
“We’ve got the instigators that are coming in from the outside. They were coming in on buses from out of state. If you go back and look at some of the arrests that were made last night. I can about say probably 70% of those had out-of-state IDs. They’re not coming from Charlotte.”
The Observer reports that the city was calm by 5:00 a.m. Thursday.
