Prosecutors in Louisiana said Tuesday that the Baton Rouge police officers involved in the fatal shooting of Alton Sterling will not face criminal charges, a decision announced nearly two years after his death prompted intense protests.
Sterling was killed in July 2016 by officers responding to a call about a man who had threatened someone with a gun. The Baton Rouge officers then encountered Sterling, 37, selling CDs outside of a convenience store, and fatally shot him during an encounter that lasted less than 90 seconds.
“This decision was not taken lightly,” Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said while announcing Tuesday morning that no criminal charges would be brought.
Landry said the state could not proceed with a prosecution of either officer involved based on an extensive review of evidence gathered by federal authorities as well as his office’s own investigation.
The Justice Department last year decided against bringing federal charges against officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake, concluding that there was “insufficient” evidence to prove that they violated Sterling’s civil rights. Federal law sets a very high bar for civil rights charges against officers, requiring that authorities prove an officer’s intent at the time of the shooting.
Sterling’s death in July 2016 came at a fraught moment of racial tumult nationwide amid shootings by and of police officers. A day after Sterling’s death prompted outrage and protests, an officer in Minnesota shot and killed Philando Castile, a school cafeteria worker, during a traffic stop, the aftermath of which was streamed live on Facebook. That same week, five police officers in Dallas were gunned down by a black man upset at police, and just days later, another gunman killed three officers in Baton Rouge.
After the Justice Department said in May 2017 it would not pursue charges, Landry said he would launch a state probe into the shooting. His office took over a state investigation into whether the officers would face criminal charges after Hillar C. Moore III, the prosecutor for East Baton Rouge, recused himself from the investigation because he had a prior relationship with Salamoni’s parents, both of whom worked with the Baton Rouge police.
The Justice Department’s decision not to pursue charges in the Sterling case marked the first time under Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the department declined to prosecute a police officer investigated for wrongdoing in a high-profile case. That decision caused frustration in Baton Rouge not only for the lack of charges, but also because the news was reported by The Washington Post before federal officials had informed Sterling’s family.
The Justice Department is also still weighing whether to bring charges in the of 43-year-old Eric Garner, who died after he was taken to the ground and put in an apparent chokehold by New York City police in 2014.
But while they declined to pursue charges in Sterling’s death, federal authorities provided Sterling’s family with new details about his death. After meeting with investigators, Chris Stewart, the lead attorney for the Sterling family, told reporters that evidence shows that at the beginning of the interaction with Sterling, Officer Salamoni put his gun to Sterling’s head, and said, “I’ll kill you, b---- .”
Video of the following 90 seconds shows officers telling Sterling to put his hands on the hood of a car. When he did not, a struggle ensued with Salamoni pulling out his gun and pointing it at Sterling’s head and later Lake shooting Sterling with a taser.
Salamoni tackled Sterling and, with Sterling on his back with both officers on top of him, one of the officers appears to yell “He’s got a gun!” Then shots rang out.
While fatal shootings by police have continued at about the same pace as previous years, according to The Washington Post’s database tracking these incidents, these incidents have drawn less national attention and largely faded from the national political debate.
Some fatal shootings still prompt widespread media attention, including the death earlier this month of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man shot and killed by Sacramento, California, police officers while in his grandmother’s backyard. The death of Clark, who was holding an iPhone at the time that police said they mistook for a gun, has given way to extended protests in that city.
Charges against officers for on-duty shootings are uncommon, and convictions in such cases are even more rare. Last week, a Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman in 2017 was charged with murder and manslaughter. Those charges came about nine months after a jury in Minnesota acquitted the officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during the traffic stop a day after Sterling was killed.