Death of Alton Sterling

Overview

Alton Sterling was a 37-year-old street vendor and resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was fatally shot while being taken into custody by two police officers in the parking lot of a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on the morning of July 5th, 2016. Shortly after the incident, videos of the confrontation recorded by several bystanders began circulating online, which quickly drew outcries of police brutality and racial profiling from law enforcement watchdog groups and members of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Background

On the early morning of July 5th, 2016, Sterling was approached and detained by two white officers of the Baton Rouge Police Department (BRPD) in the parking lot of a Triple S Food Mart convenience store. According to the BRPD, the officers arrived on the scene after receiving a complaint from a homeless man alleging that a street vendor matching the description of Sterling brandished a handgun and threatened him while selling CDs. The confrontation between the police officers and Sterling was witnessed and recorded on video by multiple bystanders.

Video Footage

On July 5th, one of the first videos from the scene was uploaded to the Baton Rouge Crime channel on YouTube, where it gathered upwards of 1.4 million views and 6,200 comments in less than 48 hours (shown below, left). On the following day, a second video showing the physical altercation and the fatal shooting from a closer angle was uploaded to the same channel (shown below, right). In both videos, Sterling is seen physically struggling as two uniformed officers tried to pin him to the ground, followed by a series of verbal warnings from the officers to stand down, before one of them aimed his gun at a point-blank range and shot Sterling several times in the chest and back.

BRPD Officer: Get on the ground! Get on the ground! Get on the fuckin' ground!
BRPD Officer #2: He’s got a gun. A gun!
BRPD Officer: Hey bro, you fuckin’ move, I swear to god.
BRPD Officer #2: Lake, he's going for the gun!
[at least six gunshots are heard]
BRPD Officer: Shots fired. Shots fired!

Developments

Protests

On the evening of the incident, approximately 100 local residents of Baton Rouge held a demonstration near the location of the incident in protest of the shooting. On July 6th, the street protests^[8] quickly grew in size and intensity in the wake of another fatal police shooting in Falcon Heights, Minnesota that occurred earlier that day, which led to the death of a 32-year-old black man named Philando Castile. On July 9th, several hundreds of protesters joined the street demonstration to demand justice over the death of Alton Sterling, and by that evening, more than 30 protesters had been arrested by the police, including former mayoral candidate of Baltimore and prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson. The arrests of the demonstrators were live-streamed via mobile video streaming app Periscope.

Online Reaction

On July 6th, several threads about the shooting reached the frontpage of the /r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut,^[6] /r/news^[5] and /r/watchpeopledie^[7] subreddits. Also on July 6th, Drake posted a message about the shooting on Instagram,^[1] which expressed concern about "the relationship between black and brown communities and law enforcement" (shown below). Within 15 hours, the post gathered upwards of 290,000 likes and 5,900 comments.

Investigation

On July 6th, the United States Justice Department opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting. That day, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards vowed that the matter would be "investigated thoroughly, impartially and professionally."^[2]

Outcome

On March 27th, 2018, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the two police officers involved in the death of Sterling would not face criminal charges, citing insufficient evidence of wrongdoing.^[15][16] He said, "Our investigation has concluded that officers Lake and Salamoni attempted to make a lawful arrest of Alton Sterling based on probable cause. During that encounter, Mr. Sterling continued to resist the officers attempts to arrest him." In the announcement, he also stated that several controlled substances were found in Sterling's system at the time of death, which may have contributed to his non-compliance.

After the decision was announced, Sterling's aunt Veda Washington said,^[17] "They took a human away. They took a father away. They took somebody away that did not deserve to be away. The way they killed was in cold blood. You know it. I know it. But yes, the system has failed us."

That day, football star and social activist Colin Kaepernick tweeted ^[18] a screencaptur of a headline regarding the outcome and added the caption, "State sanctioned lynching by means of gun violence!" The post (shown below) received more than 10,000 retweets and 23,000 likes in 24 hours.

News Media Coverage

As early as on July 5th, The Advocate^[4] published an article about the shooting, revealing that Sterling had been accused of crimes and plead guilty to aggravated battery, property damage and domestic abuse. In 2009, he was sentenced to five years for marijuana possession and illegally carrying a weapon.

Impact

DeRay Mckesson's Arrest

In the aftermath of the weekend demonstrations held across Baton Rouge, at least 102 protesters were arrested, eight firearms were confiscated from members of the New Black Panther Party and a police officer suffered injuries during a physical altercation. Meanwhile, as the news of DeRay Mckesson's arrest spread across the social media, thousands of
Black Lives Matter activists, including a number of celebrities sympathetic to the cause, demanded the release of the prominent activist using the hashtag #FreeDeray, which topped the trending topics chart on Twitter U.S. By late afternoon on July 10th, Mckesson was set free after being charged with “simple obstruction of a highway of commerce."

Search Interest

External References