Troops, extra police in Charlotte to prevent more clashes
(Worthy News) – Hundreds of National Guard troops and police reinforcements converged on Charlotte, mobilized to prevent a third night of violent protests over the fatal police shooting of a black man.
The tense southern city was under a state of emergency amid growing complaints that the authorities were slow to respond to crowds protesting the death of Keith Lamont Scott, a 43-year-old African American, on Tuesday.
One person was shot and seriously wounded and 44 were arrested as the protests swept through downtown Charlotte late Wednesday and early Thursday, triggered by the latest in a string of police-involved killings of black men that have fueled outrage across the United States. [ Source ]
Charlotte protesters say they’re sick of ‘letting things slide’
Charlotte already had suffered the controversy of House Bill 2 – the North Carolina law that nullified nondiscrimination ordinances – and outrage over the police shooting of an unarmed man from 2014. In that incident, an officer fired multiple times into a former college football player named Jonathan Ferrell. The city paid more than $2 million to settle a lawsuit by Ferrell’s family; the officer’s trial on voluntary manslaughter charges ended with a hung jury.
“We let that one slide and we saw what the results were, and the community is not having it this time around. We’re not letting things slide,” Dunlap said.
“We already know how it goes: The shooting happens. The officials kind of hide and don’t assign guilt,” Dunlap said. “It goes to trial. It gets dismissed. The families ask for peace, and then the next shooting happens a week, a month, a day later.” [ Source ]