BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Body camera footage of a police officer killing Alton Sterling shows the officer screaming profanities and threating to kill Sterling before the fatal shots were fired.
Kept under wraps for nearly two years, the videos were released Friday as the Baton Rouge police chief announced the firing of Officer Blane Salamoni.
Officer Howie Lake II, who helped wrestle Sterling to the ground but didn’t fire his gun, was also suspended for three days.
FILE – In this July 5, 2016 image made from video provided by Arthur Reed, Alton Sterling is restrained by two Baton Rouge police officers, one holding a gun, outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, La. Moments later, one of the officers shot and killed Sterling, a black man who had been selling CDs outside the store, while he was on the ground. The investigation of the deadly police shooting that inflamed racial tensions in Louisiana’s capital city has ended without criminal charges against two white officers who confronted Sterling. . Experts in police tactics think the bloodshed could have been avoided if the Baton Rouge officers had done more to defuse the encounter with Sterling. .(Arthur Reed via AP, File
Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul’s decision comes days after Louisiana’s attorney general declined to bring criminal charges against the men. Federal authorities ruled out federal criminal charges last May.
Two cellphone videos of the incident quickly spread after the shooting, but the new footage shows the most complete picture of what happened that night.
FILE – In this May 2, 2017, file photo, people congregate in front of a mural of Alton Sterling outside the Triple S Food Mart, where Sterling was killed in 2016, in Baton Rouge, La. The investigation of the deadly police shooting that inflamed racial tensions in Louisiana’s capital city has ended without criminal charges against two white officers who confronted Sterling, a black man outside a convenience store two summers ago. Experts in police tactics think the bloodshed could have been avoided if the Baton Rouge officers had done more to defuse the encounter with Sterling. They say poor police tactics and techniques may have aggravated the volatile confrontation, which lasted less than 90 seconds. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
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