Searching for a Gun in Video Recorded by Keith Scott’s Wife

It was not a gun!!! It was a black exam/personal protective equipment glove that floated to the ground after the black officer took a bunch out of his pocket to put on after the shooting as there was a lot of blood. All you conspiracy theorists can just sit down and shut up. So done with this crap!!

I find it not nice that the Comments option @ Robert Mackey’s follow-up story, “Charlotte Police Video of Keith Scott’s Killing Released” — posted on Saturday 09/24/2016 at 7:20 pm — got closed down after only two postings (sic!) while this section remains open here still today, on Monday. It seems to me The Intercept owes some formal explanation for this [de facto censorship?, a la Guardian] to all its readers. Did the journo maybe fuck up again in some way?

When you are holding a book and the police are telling you to drop the gun, drop the damn book. You will live longer.

The Scott family video has been edited. The white out seen in the video is the edit. As first I did not pay attention to it and going over it frame by frame, i noticed the object on the ground that the cop in red bent down and picked up was not on the ground before the white out.

Frame by frame of the white out start to finish reveals as the white out fades in, the object is not on the ground and as the white starts fading back into video, the object is on the ground.

Was this the gun? Some has said it was gloves and the officer in red picks them up. But frame by frame review shows after the officer in red picks up the object after the white out, the black officer does drop what appears to be gloves and they remain, on the ground the duration of the video.

I have several screen shots of what appears to be gloves falling to the ground and changing shape as they fall through the air. IMO these are black latex gloves. A photo of the gloves, 2 items on the ground is posted on this website.

IMO, the officer in red takes custody of at least 3 items, and protects at least 2 of them, by standing over them.

I don’t know why The Intercept has comments closed on the video release article. This is obviously a huge step in the right direction but why didn’t they release it before the city was torn up? Whenever the police kill someone it is an act done in the name of all the people of the city, and the people deserve to see who they are killing and what the explanation is.

The new video makes it clear that Guy in Red steps back immediately and repeatedly to cover the thing that in other photos looks like a gun, and that the object he is handed is a glove. He is not the shooter himself. So the only way he could have planted the gun is if there was some preexisting agreement for one cop to shoot the guy and the other to plant the evidence; but how could you make such an agreement knowing that you’re putting the whole thing on videotape from several angles? No, the fact is, the guy shot had the gun.

Now it is time to move on to the SUBSTANTIVE matter. You’ve got a guy who the police know (thanks to the helpful wife) has a TBI, and he has a gun, and she’s yelling “don’t do it”, and then he might have reached for it or something, I dunno. But he did *not* have it in the air pointing at someone. As a city, as a society, people need to answer the single fundamental question of this case: do they expect the police to wait until the man raises the gun in their direction before firing? That’s a yes or no question. Everything else is a red herring.

Here’s a good video of a skinhead dropping the gun out of his buttcrack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raPYKOrU0lE

(There’s others out there too. This one is very clear. It only takes 1/4 of a second to plant a weapon)

What kind of correction reads it appears possible that there may have been a glimpse of an object that could be a gun??????

The genteel racist, Karl, posts some dubious statistics which he sets forth without stating from whence they came. He then concludes: “…unarmed white suspects are more likely to be shot and killed by police officers then blacks.”

The Washington Post,my emphasis:

According to the most recent census data, there are nearly 160 million more white people in America than there are black people. White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police officers.

U.S. police officers have shot and killed the exact same number of unarmed white people as they have unarmed black people: 50 each. But because the white population is approximately five times larger than the black population, that means unarmed black Americans were five times as likely as unarmed white Americans to be shot and killed by a police officer.

Karl is deeply annoyed that this site is paying so much attention to cops killing black people and attributes this coverage to a purported “compulsive race-baiting agenda.” Clearly people like Karl cold stand to be exposed to a very great deal of “race-baiting,” if reality is ever to penetrate their bigoted skulls.

This author of this article should apologize for inflaming an already tense situation.

It”s obvious that the officer has realized that he stepped on the gun in frame 0:02-0:03 (in Ms. William’s video). He then keeps the left foot planted right next to it as he pivots with the right foot for the duration of the video.

In service its own ideological bias, the Intercept has chosen to myopically characterize the shooting of “Keith Scott” as “…only the latest in a chain of black Americans gunned down by law enforcement”. In the doing, it has also chosen to reflexively repeat this specious meme that the recent shooting deaths of “BLACK” suspects are reflective of a larger historical pattern of institutional racism in America. And again, in service to this compulsive race-baiting agenda, the Intercept has chosen to only focus on BLACK victims of police shootings. So let’s take a look at the current statistics concerning police shootings of suspects in 2016:

194 blacks have been killed by police officers in 2016
33 of these were unarmed
25 died from gunshot wounds

388 whites have been killed by police officers in 2016
65 of these were unarmed
35 died from gunshot wounds

Of the 738 individuals who have been by shot and killed by police officers in 2016, only 25 were unarmed blacks. Or, if you prefer, 3.38 % of those shot and killed by police officers in 2016 were unarmed blacks.

Of the 738 individuals who have been by shot and killed by police officers in 2016, only 35 were unarmed whites. Or, if you prefer, 4.74 % of those shot and killed by police officers in 2016 were unarmed whites.

As unarmed white suspects are more likely to be shot and killed by police officers then blacks, why are they not being included in the Intercept’s coverage of police shootings?

How did the gun move 10 feet?

Michael Render aka “Killer Mike”, on what changed over the last few decades.

https://youtu.be/l04IXWnWwf0?t=5m50s

Police, who have for 20 years, lived under a culture, where this type of person, this particular person, is a SUPERPREDATOR.

Think about the mentality that puts you in.

It’s more than just a “thing that was said”. It’s an atmosphere.

Policemen enter their work now, as though they were going in on a *hunt.*

Police are strapping up now, as though they are paramilitary, and THEY ARE HUNTING.

Slave patrols. Urban poor. Civil rights. “Integration into a burning building.” PD recruiting from the KKK. Nam.

Drug war. SWAT.

(“you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to” – Haldeman to Nixon)

Crime Bill.

And now? Lots of damaged boys returning from occupying tours in Iraq/AfPak. 1000s became/become cops. The transition is devastatingly seamless. They don’t see criminals, let alone citizens. They see insurgency. Even black cops gain the gaze. They are all scared to death in the field. White black or brown. They are terrified and, thus, furious. And they have relative impunity.

it looks to me that the picture at 2:13 has many black marks on the pavement. Leaves?

Everyone commenting here should understand the alarming difference between America’s rate of violence by police against suspects and the rest of the civilized world. Police in other countries do not feel compelled to shoot as a first response. If fact, they avoid it and often put their own lives in peril. These kind of killings, a weekly event in America, almost do not exist in other countries.
In France recently a patrol of five soldiers, part of the continuing “state of emergency,” was assaulted by a slogan-screaming Islamic fanatic. Each of them had a loaded automatic weapon. They did not shoot. They wrestled the man to the ground and handcuffed him, with three of the five sustaining knife wounds. They would not understand that their weapons give them automatic execution authority.
Now the fact that every wacko in America has a right to a gun is another issue for another forum.

If that’s a gun, it’s most likely that the Cop straddling it also planted it there. How is there no video in their body cameras when they said he was pointing a gun at them? How is it that they have “his” gun but don’t know if its loaded? Yeah, ok! They should be sure to put Mr. Scott’s prints on it unlike the Louisiana cop who planted a gun on the scene after murdering a man but only the cops prints were found on the gun. Hmm

She repeatedly and emphatically said, “Don’t do it!” Don’t do what???

Cops don’t put guns on the ground like that.

@DougSalzmann

Nothing right about it, but I’m quite sure that police routinely yell, “Drop the gun!” whether there’s a gun or not, just as they routinely yell, “Stop resisting!” while they beat the shit out of people whose “resistance” amounts to trying to protect themselves from additional battering.

yep
http://abcnews.go.com/US/dash-cam-video-clears-nj-man-violent-traffic/story?id=22660928

Marcus Jeter faced a years-long prison sentence.

The New Jersey DJ, 30, was arrested in a 2012 traffic stop and charged with eluding police, resisting arrest and assault. Prosecutors insisted that Jeter do prison time.

“The first plea was five years,” Jeter said.

But after Jeter’s attorney, Steven Brown, filed a request for records, all of the charges against him were dropped, with dash-cam video apparently showing what really happened June 7, 2012. Now, the officers are facing charges.

The video, which prosecutors say they never saw before filing the initial charges, shows Jeter holding his hands above his head.

“The next thing I know, one of them busts the [car] door and there is glass all over my face,” he told ABC News station WABC-TV about the arrest.

“As soon as they opened the door, one officer reached in and punched me in my face.”

“Stop resisting! Stop resisting! Why are you trying to take my fucking gun!”

As they continue to beat the shit out of the man, pinned, face down, on the ground.

The cop wasn’t hallucinating. This is informal, reactionary, standard operating procedure. American Cops are institutionally scared to death. It’s the rote response of an occupying force, reconciling deep rooted contradictions.

Good job, Bob Mackey. The difference between good journalism and bad isn’t “objective” v. “activist. It’s that one is careful with contentious fact claims; one performs due diligence investigating their truth before deploying them. One also does not omit salient, material facts that run contrary to one’s activist bent. – Mona

Due diligence? Are you serious? The article was originally written with the intention of insinuating that the video evidence supported the specious claim that there was no gun. It was only after several commenters expressed exasperation at the fact that a gun was clearly visible in the video that Mr Mackey was forced to add a correction. The video shot by the wife of the victim matches the still frame photo – and the gun itself reveals the victims DNA and fingerprints. Everyone of the police officers involved reported seeing a gun in the hands of the victim. The video reveals that the victim received numerous warnings as he was allowed to exit his car and walk about freely with a gun in his hand. In listening to the wife’s pleas, one can clearly hear her repeatedly tell her husband, “Don’t do it”, after he exited the car. For the entire episode, no attempted to impede the wife’s attempts to record the incident or to prevent others from taking pictures of the scene.

This has all the earmarks of suicide by cop.

oh i get it… the OPEN CARRY law is a trap for the newly branded IDF POLICE to have a ready made excuse to murder us palestinians. Clever elected law makers working for Captain Lucifer.

Who cares if the gun is there? I mean, seriously. It’s an open carry state. He was breaking no laws. They weren’t even there for him. They escalated the situation for no reason, then killed this man because they could and because they knew there would be no consequences.

After looking at the video carefully, frame-by-frame, I have arrived at the following conclusions:

1) The object identified as a ‘gun’ at 1:20 and 1:25 above disappears entirely from the pavement later in the video. Therefore, it was nothing more than a passing shadow or digital artifact.

2) Contrary to what has been claimed, there is no evidence of a gun near the foot of the red-coated cop at 1:27 either. That doesn’t happen until later in the video.

3) The most critical segment of the whole video involves individual frames from 2:10 to 2:12. You need to see individual frames to make sense of this segment. During this brief time period, the red-coated cop steps forward and looks like he is picking up a dark object (possibly a gun) from the ground near the black cop. This dark object does not appear on the ground beside the black cop until after he stoops down to reach for something on the prone man who had been shot. The black cop appeared to examine the dark object before setting it on the ground, then later the red-coated cop notices the dark object before stepping forward to pick it up. It isn’t until 2:13 that the red-coated cop straddles the dark object between his feet (adjacent to his left foot). However, he never appears to bend down to place the dark object near his feet. Could he have simply dropped it near his feet? It’s possible that the dark object near his left foot is nothing more than a shadow. Unfortunately, the frames during this time segment are too blurry to draw firm conclusions. The dark object may have been nothing more than a passing shadow, or it could have been a gun, or it could have been an object other than a gun.

3) The video frame of a crime scene with yellow tape, as shown by the police, looks manipulated to me. This video frame actually shows 3 different frames (left, right, and center); they don’t match each other at all, and only the central frame is clear. The left blurred frame shows no evidence of a police vehicle; the yellow tape on the right blurred frame appears more magnified and larger in size than the yellow tape in the central frame. In addition, the crime scene looks different from the first video, although this may be the result of a different perspective and a tendency to contract spatial distances in the camera/video lens of the later witness.

Overall, I find the evidence too blurry and ambiguous to draw any firm conclusions about the presence of a gun in either the first or second videos.

From WSOC-TV, Charlotte:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Tests revealed Keith Scott’s fingerprints, DNA and blood were on a gun recovered at Tuesday’s officer-involved shooting scene, police sources told Channel 9 reporter Mark Becker.

No doubt tests revealed exactly that.

I’ve always wondered why, well into the 21st century, we still permit police and prosecutors to control the processes of crime scene investigation and forensic analysis.

Anyway, if there was a gun, and if it were in Mr. Scott’s possession when he was shot, neither of those ostensible circumstances are evidence supporting the action of police in confronting and shooting him.

Good job, Bob Mackey. The difference between good journalism and bad isn’t “objective” v. “activist. It’s that one is careful with contentious fact claims; one performs due diligence investigating their truth before deploying them. One also does not omit salient, material facts that run contrary to one’s activist bent.

This article stands in the fine tradition of most other writers at The Intercept, of taking care for accuracy and including information readers must know to form a complete picture. Glenn Greenwald also falls within this tradition, as Doc Hollywood documented in another thread (in the context of Glenn’s Brazil reporting.)

[I do not usually reply to a handful trolls and authoritarians, at the request of many readers who do not want me to be the cause of these pests’ spewing yet more bilge. These persons want my attention and thus post silly bait and accusations to provoke replies. Nothing claimed to be held, or written by me or the writers at this site, should be believed or, considered an acceptable claim or characterization on my part, by my simply not replying to it.]

I love the Intercept– you are my go to on all my news this election cycle, Brazil politics, etc. This even handed article is one example of that. However, you REALLY need to change the title to this article–people are going to share this without even reading the article.

Mr. Mackey

“……The audio also records her shouting “Keith” and “don’t do it” several times just before the shooting, in what sounds like a plea to her husband……”

I am sure she meant: don’t hit them with the book Chris. The Intercept has an abysmal record of investigative journalism surrounding police shootings. The Michael Brown killing was a case in point. This particular shooting was done by a black officer which diminishes the possibility of racism considerably. The police should release the tapes to the public although they may be inconclusive.

In the Michael Brown shooting a false narrative was advanced for political reasons world-wide. The “hands up, hands up, don’t shoot don’t shoot” was a lie and a jury as well as the Department of Justice found no grounds to indict Officer Wilson.

Doug Salzmann
Sep. 23 2016, 5:37 p.m.

See my analysis, just below. I think it’s very unlikely that what the African American officer dropped was a gun.

________________________________________________

I was just wondering why you could not have said ” I think it’s very unlikely that what the officer dropped was a gun. ”
Were you just making sure we would know that the cop in question is black ? Don’t get upset Doug ,
I’m just curious as to why you had to differentiate based on skin color and since you did why not say he was the black officer .

For those people with good monitors, if you put the images of the object from two different perspectives sides by side, what can you glean from the differences? The shadow ( which should give an indication of height) will be more visible from her perspective. Stereo perspective should allow for a three dimensional view.

I can understand wanting to know the exact reality, and I can understand challenging the corrupt establishment, but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that America is now disturbingly okay with snuff films. I guess it would be impractical, but I wish people would be less clinical about what’s being viewed.

The monumental tragedy of the event reduced a political football, or a split between those who love/hate the police, is to embody precisely the stupid divide-and-conquer mentality imposed by the manipulative establishment – losing our common core to a superficial left/right conflict that doesn’t address the ‘winner take all’ cultural malaise of corporatist oligarchy from which grow the myriad symptoms of all societal ills.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will defang the militarized, racist and uptight police, for the establishment as a whole obviously wants law enforcement to be intimidatingly dominant so the people don’t get any ideas.

America needs real help, something bigger than “shall we gather at the snuff film” – which is really sad.

Were the police (I just don’t know) called to the scene for any reason related to Mr. Scott? And if not, does anyone know why they focused their attention on him? Was he minding his own business in his vehicle with his gun (or whatever)?

Wife’s video: no gun. CMPD photo is complete fabrication.
And just because one cop says he sees a weapon, it does not make it true (i.e. Tulsa).
Also cops hover over body and wisper to each other. Throw items on ground. They did not handcuff the suspect, clear the gun, or clear area. They look like they are colluding a cover up.
Oh, and why can the cops release details of investigation (i.e. Details of the gun) and not release the videos.
Oh that’s right, can’t release the videos so as not to impact the investigation or public perception.
Through its cover up and lieing, CMPD has broken the social compact and should no longer be allowed to have the right to use deadly force.
Also, it is clear there is no gun

Gun, no gun. I honestly can’t tell either way. It seems that the police are justifying this killing if there was a gun present. But isn’t NC an open carry state? Does that only apply to white folks? I would think in an open carry state this sort of thing must happen all the time. (IF, in fact there even was a gun and I have my doubts) So why are NC police not better trained to handle situations like these that I’d think they’d encounter frequently? I have a very strong suspicion that if that were a white man it would have gone down much differently.

Why is it impossible for a Black man to read a book waiting for his son to come out from school, as he did each day, without being shot and accused of violent crime?

I am a huge fan of the Intercept because of the work it’s done trying to maintain a level of objectivity and integrity while covering the 2016 election cycle, but this is an incredibly irresponsible headline.

You say, definitively, that “No Gun Seen” near the victim’s body when, in fact, it’s unclear if there’s no gun seen near the victim’s body by the article’s own admission.

The police should release the shooting video as they always should when there’s a dispute as to the merit of the shooting and the fact they won’t is incredibly suspect, but this is still severely poor form by the Intercept.

Very disappointing.

It shouldn’t be that hard for the police to Photoshop a gun into the video. I’m not sure what’s taking them so long. Perhaps their Photoshop guy is on vacation.

if you are a baker, what matters is the quality of your bread and cake.
if you are a car mechanic, what matters is the quality of your work.
if you are a policeman, what matters is the quality of the facts.

TRUSTING POLICE HAS BECOME A RISKY THING TO DO.
Given the lies in shooting cases, it is appearing that perhaps police lie more than 50% of the time.

How often do prosecutors lie?

Click play, then click the settings button and change the speed to 0.25. Between 2:01 and 2:02, the gun can be seen dropping to the ground (h/t Mike).

There appears to be a gun at 2:02 in the video by the officer’s foot, just to the right of the officer’s white shoe.

THE GUN IS IN THE SHADOW YOU MORON!! How did this even get to print, never mind the top of my search. If you watch the whole video you see it outside of the shadow. You even see an officer put on gloves before picking it up. You better retract this article fast. Stop yelling fire in a crowded theater stupid media pundits.

Police possibly using a drop piece? Who would have thought?

Mr. Mackey – maybe there was a gun, maybe there’s wasn’t. What service do you think you’re doing by publishing conjecture about this incident, stoking the flames no doubt. Really, what are you trying to prove?

Just curious…how many white people have been killed by police since this whole anti-police rage began with the shooting of the gentle giant Michael Brown? Are white lives not worthy and don’t they matter?

Never mind the gun… where the fuck did the PLANT come from? In the Twitter photo there are big leafy branches hanging down right next to the gun. I don’t see any break in the industrial lawn monotony anywhere on our side of the street. I can only assume the blue van is parked somewhere else in the Twitter photo than where it is in this one, but there are so few landmarks in that photo I have no idea if it’s even in the same general area.

So it’s not really a contradiction to me, more a general WTF. I want the tape and no more bullshit excuses, and a total repeal of any law prohibiting the public from seeing this kind of important evidence in the future.