The city of Charlotte was thrown into chaos this week as, amid protests and competing narratives, city officials struggled to make sense of the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott. The task has proven particularly difficult because of the social media attention, and the ensuing protests by Black Lives Matter supporters.
From the beginning, the facts of this case were widely disputed. His daughter, who was not at the scene of the incident when the shooting occurred, claimed in a video on Facebook Live that “they [Charlotte PD] shot my daddy ‘cause he’s black”. Her version of the shooting alleged that Scott “was sitting in his car reading a mother******* book”. However, according to CNN, police reported that they did not find a book at the scene, but did find a gun.
Twitter, too, seemed hellbent on assuming that the shooting was at best a wrongful death, and at worst, an act of racism. User @TeamSmokie posted a Video after the shooting which showed a police officer dropping a black item to the ground. The user’s accompanying tweet asserted that the video showed the officer planting a gun at the scene. Responses to the video seemed to either agree with @TeamSmokie’s assertion that the officer was tampering with evidence, or to dispute the claim and instead propose that the black item being dropped was a glove, and that the gun could be seen already on the ground just inches from the officer’s foot.
Amid the uncertainty surrounding the incident, protestors stormed the streets of Charlotte, rioting, looting, and expressing their disillusionment over social media. A eriscope user streamed video of himself looting. One video surfaced of a man being punched, kicked, knocked down, and his pants pulled down. Users hashtagged their tweets #Setup, and vocally demanded that Charlotte city officials #ReleaseTheTape. The story had blown up, and before any official facts or reports had been released, social media users had judged the officers involved and rendered them guilty.
The recent press conference on Saturday, however, directly refuted the protestors’ assertions that Scott had been unarmed. Chief Kerr Putney Stated that “The reason for the encounter is because laws were broken.” “A cop saw [Scott] smoking weed,” Putney said, “The situation escalated when he presented a gun.” Photos of the gun and holster found in Scott’s possession at the site corroborate Chief Putney’s assertions. The City of Charlotte has since released the body cam footage of the shooting as well as the dash cam video.
The poignant issue of this case isn’t necessarily systematic racism, not in Charlotte. Before any of the facts in the case were made public, Twitter exploded with hashtag activists, and Black Lives Matter activists took to the streets, again leaving their own community broken and hurting. This caused Charlotte PD, who had previously declined to release the footage to the public until the investigation had concluded, to release the footage to put down the riots. social media is driving the directionality and the nature of the investigatory proceedings in this case. It may be true that Scott’s death was wrongful—it remains to be seen whether Scott threatened the lives of the officers. However, it’s important that we think about how we want justice to work.
