ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Attorneys of Andrew Brown Jr.’s family said Monday afternoon that the Pasquotank County authorities only showed them 20 seconds of the redacted body cam video of Brown’s fatal shooting by sheriff’s office deputies.
The family’s attorneys expressed disappointment in what the county authorities showed them Monday, describing the video as a “snippet” and saying it was heavily redacted.
“We do not feel we got transparency,” said Ben Crump, one of the family’s attorneys.
The video shows Brown in his car with his hands on the steering wheel as officers opened fire last Wednesday, said Chantel Lassiter, another attorney for the family.
Harry Daniels, also a Brown family attorney, said Brown was shot in the back of the head. He was not a threat to officers, Daniels said.
Pasquotank County Sheriff Tommy Wooten and chief deputy Daniel Fogg posted a video statement on Facebook a few minutes before 6 p.m. saying the shooting incident lasted less than 30 seconds.
“Body cams are shaky and sometimes hard to decipher,” Wooten said. “They only tell part of the story.”
The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation is still probing the shooting, Fogg said.
“It’s not appropriate to make any decisions until we get all the facts,” he said.
A witness told The Virginian-Pilot last week that Brown, 42, drove his car from his driveway into a grassy lot as officers continued to fire. Brown’s car stopped after hitting a tree along Roanoke Avenue, a block from his house.
The family and attorneys arrived at the Pasquotank County Public Safety Building Monday morning with expectations of seeing the video at 11:30 a.m.
Instead, they found the building door was locked, which drew criticism from the 150 or so protesters and Brown supporters gathered in the parking lot.
More than a dozen news media cameras were lined up in front of the large doors. A drone flew overhead and a television helicopter hovered higher above, nearly drowning out the speakers.
The attorneys and a few of Brown’s family members spoke at different times over about three and a half hours. The podium in front of the doors was covered in media microphones.
At one point, Bakari Sellers, another of Brown’s family’s attorneys, stepped up to the podium.
“I’m tired of this being cyclical,” he said. “We grieve, we cry, we protest and we go to a funeral.”
During the day, leaders shouted chants repeated by the crowd.
“Say his name!” one chanted.
“Andrew Brown,” the crowd responded.
County officials sent an email after 11 a.m. stating that they needed to redact parts of the video before it could be showed to the family. The attorneys and local leaders of the black community felt it was an insult not to have the video ready.
“They should have done that four days ago,” said Keith Rivers, president of the local chapter of the NAACP.
Lassiter, who counted as many as eight officers in the video said police shouted obscenities at Brown as they demanded to see his hands. She said Brown was not a threat to officers as he backed his car away from them after being shot. He struck a nearby tree, his car riddled with bullets.
”There was no time in the 20 seconds that we saw where he was threatening the officers in any kind of way,” she said. “He was trying to evade being shot,” Lassiter said.
County Attorney Michael Cox sought to limit the number of family members and attorneys who viewed the footage, and restricted it to a 20-second clip that he deemed pertinent, Crump said.
Lassiter said she lost count of how many times deputies fired at Brown. Some had assault rifles and others had handguns, she said. A few wore tactical uniforms. She said the footage did not show what led up to the shooting.
The footage came from an officer who was farthest away from Brown and not on the driver’s side, she said. Crump said they are pushing for seeing footage from each officer who was there, in addition to dash cam footage and anything captured by other nearby cameras.
Court records show that the sheriff’s department had been investigating Brown for more than a year, and allegedly had a confidential informant buy drugs from Brown at his home and various motels during that time.
A search warrant dated April 20, the day before the shooting, permitted members of a drug task force to look for crack cocaine, fentanyl and other drug-related items at his house at 421 Perry Street. They could also search either of two cars he was known to drive, a green 2004 BMW and a gray BMW. The year of the gray car was not listed.
The warrant stated that Brown was known to sell in crack cocaine, heroin laced with fentanyl and methamphetamines. He has been charged with several narcotics related crimes since 1997, it said.
source pilotonline