States limits on police video access thwart grieving North Carolina family
By Julia Harte and Alexandra Ulmer
Reuters
(Reuters) - A North Carolina law that restricts the release of recordings from police cameras is complicating efforts by relatives of Andrew Brown Jr., a Black man killed by sheriff s deputies last week, to view the footage capturing his shooting death.
The family s struggle reflects a hurdle faced in many U.S. states, where a thicket of complex laws limits public access to body-camera footage that can prove crucial in prosecutions of officers involved in such shootings.
U.S. law enforcement agencies are under mounting pressure to use body-worn cameras following high-profile police killings, including the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin. Prosecutors used Chauvin s body-camera footage - as well as video shot by a bystander - to help convince a jury to convict the former officer on April 20.
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On Monday, the attorney for Pasquotank County in North Carolina showed a snippet of body camera footage to the family of
Andrew Brown, a 42-year-old Black man who was fatally shot by police last week. Police in Elizabeth City, NC were attempting to serve Brown with an arrest warrant on drug related charges. A witness who described the chaotic scene said police shot Brown as he was attempting to drive away.
The shooting and lack of details about it have led to protests in the community.
Lawyer Ben Crump told of the fatal shot as detailed in the private post-mortem examination conducted by Brent Hall, a former medical examiner in Boone, North Carolina. It went into the base of the neck, bottom of the skull and got lost in his brain. That was the cause of death, Mr Crump said.
Shortly after the briefing, the FBI s Charlotte Field Office announced it had opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting, saying it would work with prosecutors in the US Department of Justice to determine whether federal laws were violated .
Brown s death led to six nights of protests in Elizabeth City and came a day after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, in a trial that put a spotlight on police violence against black people.