{Governor calls emergency measure as rallies against police killing of Keith Lamont Scott intensify, with a person shot.}<\/p>\n
Racial tensions in the US have reached boiling point after protests in Charlotte against police killings of black men turned increasingly violent, forcing the North Carolina governor to declare a state of emergency in the city.<\/p>\n
The protests began on Tuesday after a police officer killed Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old black man.<\/p>\n
His death followed another police killing of a black man in Tulsa on Friday, Terence Crutcher. Protests are also ongoing in the Oklahoma city.<\/p>\n
The protests in Charlotte late on Wednesday saw one person critically injured after being shot. Police said that victim, who they did not identify, was shot by a civilian.<\/p>\n
Authorities have been attempting to quell public anger after Scott’s death, with police in riot gear firing tear gas at protesters, and arresting those they accuse of violence.<\/p>\n
Mark Thompson, a radio host of Make it Plain, a show focusing on human rights, told Al Jazeera: “This is tragic. It’s a very sad night for the people of Charlotte. As Dr [Martin Luther] King said, so-called riots are the language of the unheard. It’s an extension and direct result of the modern-day lynching of Keith Lamont Scott.”<\/p>\n
With officials refusing to release any video of Scott, anger built as two very different versions emerged.<\/p>\n
Conflicting accounts<\/p>\n
Police say Scott disregarded repeated demands to drop his gun, while neighbourhood residents say he was holding a book, not a weapon, as he waited for his son to get off the school bus.<\/p>\n
“You have to wonder what is the real rioting going on?” Thompson told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“Is this a good old-fashioned police riot, with all the violence being carried out against African Americans? We [African Americans] have to ponder every day whether we are going to make it home safely or whether we are going to be victims of the police.”<\/p>\n
While a police video of the fatal shooting of Scott has not been released, a video showing the moment Crutcher died in the Tulsa shooting was made available for public viewing.<\/p>\n
“We know [from that video] without a doubt Terence Crutcher had his hands in the air,” said Thompson.<\/p>\n
The protests in Charlotte included shutting down the eight-lane Interstate 85 and burning the contents of a tractor-trailer.<\/p>\n
Along with the man critically injured, paramedics said two other people and six police officers suffered minor injuries.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from Charlotte, said: “They [protesters] want to make the point that what happened [Tuesday’s police shooting] is unacceptable.”<\/p>\n
{{State of emergency}}<\/p>\n
North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory announced late on Wednesday he was accepting a request from Charlotte’s police chief, declaring a state of emergency and calling in the National Guard and state troopers to help restore order and protect downtown.<\/p>\n
Protesters have been chanting “black lives matter” and “hands up; don’t shoot”. But some clashes between protesters and police saw officers fire flash grenades and marchers throw fireworks in return.<\/p>\n
Video of a solidarity protest in New York showed protesters chanting slogans and carrying placards reading: “Black lives matter” and “Stop the war on black America”.<\/p>\n
John Barnett, who runs a civil rights group called True Healing Under God, or THUG, warned that the video might be the only way for the police to regain the community’s trust.<\/p>\n
“Just telling us this is still under investigation is not good enough for the windows of the Wal-Mart.”<\/p>\n
On Wednesday morning, Kerr Putney, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief, said: “It’s time to change the narrative, because I can tell you from the facts that the story’s a little bit different as to how it’s been portrayed so far, especially through social media.”<\/p>\n
Putney said officers were serving arrest warrants on another person when they saw Scott get out of a vehicle with a handgun.<\/p>\n
A black officer – named as Brentley Vinson – shot Scott after the officer and other uniformed members of the force made “loud, clear” demands that he drop the gun, the chief said.<\/p>\n
Putney said Scott posed a threat even if he did not point his weapon at officers, and said a gun was found next to the dead man.<\/p>\n
“I can tell you we did not find a book,” the chief said.<\/p>\n
Neighbours, though, said that the officer who fired was white and that Scott had his hands in the air.<\/p>\n
The three uniformed officers had body cameras; the plainclothes officer did not, police said.<\/p>\n
But Putney said he cannot release the video because the investigation is still under way. No mobile-phone video has emerged on social media, as happened in other cases around the country.<\/p>\n
Standard procedure<\/p>\n
Vinson, a two-year member of the department, has been placed on leave, standard procedure in such cases.<\/p>\n
“It is so essential to know what actually took place,” Andrew Jerell Jones, a political writer, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“Right now, we have the family standing firm on their story, and the local police standing firm on their story.”<\/p>\n
He said the protests were “a result of what took place not just on Tuesday evening, but throughout many years throughout the history of Charlotte”.<\/p>\n
According to a tally being kept by the Guardian newspaper, police have killed at least 194 black men so far this year. In all of 2015, police killed at least 306 black men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{Governor calls emergency measure as rallies against police killing of Keith Lamont Scott intensify, with a person shot.} Racial tensions in the US have reached boiling point after protests in Charlotte against police killings of black men turned increasingly violent, forcing the North Carolina governor to declare a state of emergency in the city. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28819"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28819"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}