Charlotte Police Release Videos of Keith Scott Shooting After Protests

Keith Scott (right),  a Charlotte, N.C. man shot and killed by police on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2016

After days of protests in Charlotte, N.C. behind the police shooting death of Keith Scott, police have released two videos of the shooting. And neither clearly supports the department's early claims of how the incident happened.

Scott, a 43-year-old father of seven children, was shot and killed by police on Tuesday. One video is a dashboard camera from a police car, and the other video is from the body camera of an officer.

The video footage shows Scott leaving his car and slowly walking away from it, as police are aiming at him and telling him to drop his gun. The footage, however, doesn't clearly show him holding a gun as police have claimed. Scott's hands are also down by his sides for as long as he is standing, until he falls when an officer shoots him.

The video footage can be seen below. It may contain disturbing content.

Before the video footage was released, police said that Scott was armed with a gun that was recovered at the scene. The gun, police said, have Scott's fingerprints and DNA. They also said marijuana was discovered inside of his vehicle. On Saturday, after releasing the footage, they released a full statement.

The statement said that police were in the parking lot, sitting in an unmarked car while preparing to serve an arrest warrant to someone else. They saw and ignored Scott rolling a marijuana "blunt;" but that after seeing Scott hold a gun up, they determined that "the combination of illegal drugs and the gun" was a "public safety concern."

Many have pointed out that even if Scott were armed, that North Carolina is an open-carry state, so that police seeing a gun shouldn't have been cause for arrest.

Scott's widow has maintained that he didn't have a gun in his hand or pointed at officers. She was standing nearby when the shooting occurred, and the family released a cell phone video of the immediate aftermath of the incident.

"Mr. Scott does not appear to be acting aggressive," said Justin Bamberg, the attorney for Scott's family, according to the Washington Post. "He doesn't lung at the officers. It appears he has his hands by his side. The moment he is shot, he is passively stepping back."

“Our goal has, from the beginning, been to get the absolute unfiltered truth, and the only way to get that for the police is to release the videos,” said Ray Dotch, Scott’s ­brother-in-law. “Unfortunately we are left with far more questions than we have answers.”

Washington Post reports that Police Chief Kerr Putney said he doesn't plan to charge any of the officers involved with a crime, but that charges could come from a state investigation.