When Your Police Kill Me, I Hope There Is No Video

The Charlotte police have been refusing to release their videos of the death of Keith Lamont Scott at the hands of the police. That hasn’t stopped them from characterizing the video, hoping the public would just take their word for it.

Now, Scott’s family has a released a cell phone video of the event, taken by his wife as she watched police officers gun down her husband. It’s shaky, and incomplete. It doesn’t show the shots being fired. It doesn’t prove anything, either way. Still, it is gut wrenching to watch.

The video was obtained by NBC News and can be seen here.

I don’t know what you see. We’ve been through enough of these shootings together: as Americans, as lawyers, as readers, as commentators, that I know that people watch these things with their own biases baked in.

I can only tell you what I see. And what I see is a black man who was dead the moment the cops showed up. The cops weren’t looking for Scott. They were there to serve a warrant on somebody else. But once that unfortunate confluence put police in shooting range of that particular black man, he had no chance. He was dead long before the shots were fired.

Legally, the video is useless. It shows the cops shouting some 12 times for Scott to put down a gun. That perhaps goes to the cops state of mind when they killed him, but it doesn’t prove whether or not Scott in fact had a gun or was threatening them in any way. It shows his wife, begging, pleading with the cops to de-escalate the situation. She says that he has a “TBI,” which is a “traumatic brain injury.” She says he’s not a threat. She’s trying to explain the situation to the officers before they gun down her husband.

The officers, callously to my eyes, disregard her. But they are legally entitled to do so. Scott, of course, was legally entitled to posses a weapon. The video doesn’t show whether he was threatening the cops with that weapon, or not.

In fact, the video shows no weapon. Charlotte police have been promulgating a still photograph of what appears to be a gun at the dead man’s feet. That object is not visible in the video. On the contrary, there is a clear picture of Scott’s feet, and there is no object where the police photograph calims the gun landed. Did police tamper with the crime scene? Did somebody else? Who knows.

There isn’t enough in this footage to exonerate the cops of wrong-doing. There isn’t enough to convict them.

At least, there’ not enough to convict them in court. Not just based on this video. But what I see is a black man, a disabled black man, who had no chance to survive his encounter with police. I see multiple lives that didn’t matter to the cops. Scott’s life didn’t matter, his wife’s life didn’t matter, his children’s lives didn’t matter. Charlotte police were not trying to protect and serve the Scott family. They were waiting for Scott to give them an excuse to shoot him to death.

The unresolved legal question will be whether Scott did in fact give the officers enough of an excuse to kill him. But whether or not a court, a jury, or a prosecutor who thinks he’s a defense attorney for the police, gives the officers ex-post-facto justification for their actions, the end of Scott’s life was fated the minute the cops stumbled upon him.

The video confirms that my life means nothing to law enforcement. It means so little that cops won’t even acknowledge my wife if she’s begging them for it.

When they get me, I hope I am alone. I hope there is no video. I hope nobody I care about ever has to watch me be meaningless. It’s the only dignity I can hope for from American police.

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Elie Mystal is an editor for Above the Law and is tired of living under state-sponsored terrorism.