CHARLOTTE, N.C.-Before he became known as the police officer who fatally shot a black man, sparking days of protests in North Carolina's largest city, friends knew Brent Vinson as someone who naturally ascended into leadership, a former college football player with a peacemaker's heart.
More than 2 hours of video being withheld
CHARLOTTE, N.C. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has refused to release more than two hours of footage that video cameras captured at the University City apartment complex where police fatally shot Keith Lamont Scott last week. On Saturday, CMPD released about two minutes of video footage, captured by a dashboard camera and a body camera, showing the moments immediately before and after the Sept. 20 shooting. But the police body camera captured a total of 16 minutes of footage, while the dash-cam recorded an hour and 50 minutes. The last 14 minutes of footage from the body camera shows officers performing CPR and providing medical help to Scott, according to CMPD lawyer Judy Emken. Charlotte Observer lawyer Jon Buchan said Emken told him Wednesday that the footage wasn't released because it is "very violent" and too graphic. She said the video was not shown to Scott's family for the same reasons. The more than 100 minutes of video from the dash camera that has been withheld from the public shows only "police milling around about the scene and reveals nothing relevant to the shooting," Emken told the Observer's lawyer. Observer Executive Editor Rick Thames said the video that has been withheld may be important to the public. "There are any number of questions the video could help answer, not the least of which is whether there was a gun at the scene, near where Keith Scott fell," Thames said. Police have said Scott was armed when he was shot. Family members have said he wasn't. From the video released so far, it's not clear whether he had a gun at the time. A photograph circulated last week on social media appeared to show a dark, L-shaped object a few feet from the soles of Scott's shoes after he was shot. In a letter Monday to CMPD Chief Kerr Putney and City Manager Ron Kimble, written on behalf of the Observer and other news organizations, Buchan requested all the undisclosed footage. CMPD and city officials have argued that the videos are not public records. They contend the footage falls within the definition of "reports of criminal investigations," which are exempt from the state's public records law. In an interview with the Observer on Wednesday, Putney said the department released all the video it legally could without adversely affecting the investigation into the shooting. Thames said the news organizations requesting access disagree with the Police Department's interpretation of the law. The videos, in their view, fall squarely within the North Carolina Public Records Act, Thames said. "Transparency is essential to rebuilding trust," Thames said. "You don't achieve that by only releasing portions of videos. Think about what happened here. Any citizen had a right to be standing in that parking lot, observing what was happening on the day that Keith Lamont Scott was shot. Those cameras were there expressly to record what happened. It makes no sense to block the public's view of what happened." Following intense criticism and recent calls for his resignation, Putney said Wednesday that his department would release more information to victim's families and the public after police shootings. He told the Observer that the department would break from past practice and try to provide footage from dash-cams and body cameras once the cases are resolved. The dash-cam and body-cam videos released so far both came from the same officer, Emken said. About 50 other officers arrived at the scene after the shooting and all had cameras, Emken said. Those videos contain nothing of "relevance," Emken said. They show officers driving to the scene, but the cameras were turned off as they arrived, she said. Charles Monnett, a Charlotte lawyer who is helping to represent the Scott family, said that he too would like to see all of the video that has been withheld. "We want information. And we want to be able to draw our own conclusions," Monnett said. "And I think that's where the community is. If we want trust, trust is based on openness." In his letter to city officials, Buchan said transparency gives the public an opportunity to understand government decisions. "To paraphrase what the U.S. Supreme Court has said, while citizens don't expect their public institutions to be infallible, it is difficult for them to accept what they are not allowed to observe," Buchan said."It's heartbreaking," said Dustin Allman, who was video coordinator on the football team at Liberty University, where Vinson played defense. "There's no hate in this guy."
The 26-year-old Vinson, who is also black, is on administrative leave as officials review the death of Scott, 43. Police have said Scott was armed with a pistol and refused to drop it when Vinson opened fire in the parking lot of an apartment complex where Vinson and another officer had gone to serve an arrest warrant.
While video of the shooting shows only a glimpse of Vinson, the crack of four gunshots is plain. The officer hasn't commented publicly, but police have said in a statement that Vinson "perceived Mr. Scott's actions and movements as an imminent physical threat to himself and the other officers" when he fired.
Bryce Laguer, 26, said he attended high school in Charlotte with Vinson and has known him about 12 years. He described Vinson as a person who was taught moral principles by his parents and applied them even as a teenager by "debugging" conflicts at school before they escalated.
"There are very few men who I have met who can balance toughness and tenderness," Laguer said. "Brent Vinson is that man."
Vinson's official biography on the football website at Liberty, a Christian university, describes a fast, physical player who excelled on the field and was valued for his team leadership. He was elected captain by his teammates, an honor that Allman said goes only to the "cream of the crop."
"He just had this humility about it," said Allman, who now pastors a church in Kingsport, Tennessee. "People really just gravitated to him. He was a very friendly guy."
Vinson majored in criminal justice, setting the stage for a life in law enforcement like his dad Alex Vinson, who retired from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department as a sergeant about a decade ago.
Brent Vinson was hired in July 2014 at a starting salary of about $42,000, records show. He was being paid around $53,000 annually and worked on a plainclothes detail that targeted crime hotspots at the time of the shooting, the police department said. Laguer said Vinson is married.
Police records show he hasn't been the subject of any disciplinary actions.
While demonstrators have alleged police racism since Scott's shooting death, Allman said Vinson got along well with blacks and whites and never showed any signs of prejudice or hot-headedness against anyone.
"Black lives matter. Blue lives matter. But what if the blue life is a black man?" Allman said.
The president of the local NAACP chapter, Corine Mack, said black officers often feel pressured to adopt the attitudes of the police force, to somehow set aside their racial identity when they put on their uniform. "They feel they have to conform," Mack said.
Laguer, who said he has spoken with Vinson since the shooting, described the officer as being too principled to do anything he didn't believe was right.
"There are few people who you come across in life with principles, the intent to follow through with things that matter, and the sensitivity that requires," said Laguer. "He's one of them."