As the Charlotte Observer reports, Mecklenburg District Attorney Andrew Murray announced Wednesday that the officer who fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott earlier this year lawfully used deadly force and will not face criminal charges. Murray explained that a CMPD and SBI investigation into the shooting indicated that Scott was armed with a handgun during the deadly confrontation with officers and ignored commands to drop the weapon. According to another report by the Observer, protestors marched from CMPD headquarters to the city center following the announcement; speakers at the protest called for increased police transparency. Keep reading for more news.
SOG Staff
News Roundup
The Washington Post reports that voters in Nebraska, California, and Oklahoma showed their support for the death penalty by “rejecting measures that would abolish it and, in one case, giving lawmakers more room to find new execution methods.” In Oklahoma, voters approved a proposal to add language to the state constitution explicitly stating that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment, and gave state lawmakers the ability to adopt “any method of execution not prohibited by the United States Constitution.” As the News Roundup previously has noted, obtaining the drugs typically used for lethal injection is becoming increasingly difficult. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
Two Iowa police officers were shot and killed early Wednesday morning in ambush attacks that made national news. As the Des Moines Register reports, Urbandale Police Officer Justin Martin and Des Moines Police Sgt. Anthony Beminio each were shot while in their vehicles. The lone suspect, Scott Michael Greene, was apprehended a few hours after the shootings. Early reports indicate that Greene had a run-in with Urbandale officers in the middle of last month after an incident at a high school football game where he waved a Confederate flag in front of a group of African-Americans and was ejected from the stadium. The stadium is located at a traffic intersection where one of the officers was shot. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
The NC Department of Public Safety says that a portion of Neuse Correctional Institution was evacuated on Monday morning following a disturbance that started late Sunday afternoon. According to a press release, a small group of inmates “set two separate fires, one inside the prison’s diagnostic building and one that destroyed a storage shed.” The inmates also broke windows and damaged four dorms. Approximately 500 inmates were transferred to other prisons because of the damage. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
As the News & Observer reports, the Orange County Republican Party headquarters in Hillsborough was firebombed and vandalized over the weekend. According to the report, “[a] flaming bottle was thrown through a window of the office” and an adjacent building was vandalized with paintings of a swastika and the phrase “Nazi Republicans leave town or else.” The incident drew the attention of both presidential candidates, and vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence and Governor McCrory each visited the headquarters. McCrory has offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest in the case. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
Hurricane Matthew hit Eastern North Carolina hard over the weekend. Twenty North Carolinians lost their lives and many communities experienced severe flooding. The Fayetteville Observer has extensive coverage of the aftermath of the storm, including remarkable aerial photographs of flooded Lumberton. Governor McCrory has activated the Hurricane Matthew Relief Fund and the North Carolina Department of Justice is warning residents of areas damaged by the hurricane to be wary of scams in the wake of the storm. A number of courthouses are closed because of the storm and the AOC has a list of closings available here. Best wishes for a speedy recovery from the hurricane; keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
Reuters reported this week that Yahoo “secretly built a custom software program to search all of its customers’ incoming emails for specific information provided by U.S. intelligence officials.” Reuters says that the government sent Yahoo a classified request to search the email accounts, likely under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The scope of the surveillance is unprecedented and involved “hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail accounts.” The revelation comes just a month after the company announced that state-sponsored hackers stole information from 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014. Change those passwords and keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
The officer-involved shooting of Keith Lamont Scott and the associated protests in Charlotte continue to be in the local and national news. Mecklenburg County Public Defender Kevin Tully gave his view on the unrest in Charlotte late last week on NPR’s All Things Considered. The Charlotte Observer reports that the Charlotte Police Department has announced that it will “reverse course and be more open about releasing videos of police shootings to victims’ families and the public.” The move comes after the department was reluctant to release footage of the Scott shooting in the days immediately following the incident. The Observer report notes that a new state law regarding law enforcement recordings, S.L. 2016-88, goes into effect on Saturday. As the Observer reports, the new law is generating controversy; some say it reduces law enforcement transparency and accountability while others view it as an improvement over the current patchwork of local policies regarding recordings. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
Protests erupted in Charlotte this week in response to an officer-involved shooting of a black man, Keith Lamont Scott, on Tuesday afternoon. The protests, to which law enforcement officers have responded by donning riot gear and using tear gas to disperse crowds, are making national news. One person was shot during the protests on Wednesday night. The Charlotte Observer reports that Governor McCrory has declared a state of emergency for the city and has deployed the National Guard and Highway Patrol troopers to assist local law enforcement. At the time of writing, there are conflicting reports regarding the circumstances of the Scott shooting. The Charlotte Police Department said that Scott was armed with a handgun when he was shot; some witnesses claim that he was reading a book. Keep reading for more news.
News Roundup
Trial began this week in Oregon for Ammon Bundy and six codefendants facing various charges stemming from their armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year. The Oregonian reports that people began lining up at 7 a.m. on Tuesday to get a seat inside the courtroom. According to USA Today, each of the seven defendants is charged with conspiring to impede federal land managers through force and intimidation, and five defendants are charged with firearm offenses. In the waning days of the standoff, the de facto spokesman for the occupation, LaVoy Finicum, was shot and killed after he fled a traffic stop and, in an ensuing confrontation with police officers and FBI agents, appeared to be preparing to draw a handgun. Keep reading for more news.