The family of an Alabama teen fatally shot by a Homewood police officer claims body camera footage shown to them by the Jefferson County district attorney was a “small clip of an edited ALEA video.”
They are demanding to be shown the unedited footage.
“We wanted transparency first and foremost,” said national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is among a team of lawyers representing the family of 18-year-old Jabari Peoples.
“We still don’t believe we have arrived at transparency,” Crump said in a Wednesday press conference outside the county courthouse.
“We believe there is much unedited video that the family and the community has a right to view.”
Peoples was fatally shot June 23 by a Black, uniformed officer who was investigating suspicious activity in Homewood Soccer Park off Lakeshore Drive.
D.A. Danny Carr received the results of the six-week investigation Friday and on Wednesday ruled Peoples’ death justified.
Carr said no criminal charges will be filed against the officer and the case will not be presented to a grand jury for indictment consideration.
Peoples, Carr said, struggled with the officer and then grabbed a Glock .45 from his car.
The teen was still holding the gun when he collapsed on the ground, Carr said.
Homewood police said they will not be releasing the video footage. but Mayor Alex Wyatt issued this statement Wednesday evening: “We can’t imagine the anguish of the Peoples’ family in the aftermath of this tragic event and hope the community will respect the District Attorney’s decision, which he says is based on the facts and the law.”
Peoples’ parents, Vivian Sterling and William Peoples, were at the courthouse on Wednesday but did not watch the footage.
The teen’s brother and sister, as well as the attorney, viewed the video.
“Today I am outraged. I am hurt. I have so many unanswered questions still,” said Peoples’ older sister, Angel Smith.
“What I saw in the video was my brother was afraid, he was scared, he was running for his life,” Smith said.
“Even to the point where he was shot in the back, he was telling the officer, ‘Sir, I promise I’m not trying to resist. This is my cell phone.’”
The video shown the family was about four minutes long, with about a minute of it capturing the interaction between Peoples and the officers.
“They saw raw footage of the body cam of the officer from the time of the struggle until the time they were rendering aid,” Carr told AL.com.
“We showed what we had, we showed what was unequivocally what we believed to be true, and we showed what was relevant to why the officer was there,” Carr said.
“I don’t think that’s in dispute. They were in the park late at night.”
Carr said there is also no dispute that there was marijuana in the car.
“It was sitting on top of the car,” he said of the jar of weed that Peoples’ girlfriend handed over to police.
“It’s not in dispute that he got them out of the car, and as he’s trying to put the cuffs on him, that’s when the struggle ensued,” Carr said.
“I don’t think any of it is up for debate.”
Crump said from the video they saw, they concluded that Peoples was shot in the back while he was running away and that he “never pointed anything at the police officer.”
“We also know that he was roughed up, that there was more to this interaction than what has been provided,” Crump said.
“The family feels they have a right to know everything that happened that led up to him being shot in his back running away.”
Crump said he wants all of the evidence in the possession of the Homewood Police Department – including video – to be released to them and the public.
“Obviously, this family doesn’t understand why it took six weeks to release the video. You’ve had the video since Day 1,” Crump said.
“If you felt it was justified, why didn’t you just release it and not put the family through this pain and suffering on top of pain and suffering.”
“What I gathered from what we saw today left me with more questions than answers,” said Birmingham attorney Leroy Maxwell.
“Why it took this long is a problem. We’ve always been fighting and arguing for transparency. It doesn’t make sense to drag a family through this for this length of time.”
“Did we get a step closer to transparency? Maybe but we’ve got a long way to go,” Maxwell said. “Obviously we still have petitions in the court and we’re going to be looking to Homewood to fill in those blanks.”
“Why they would provide us today with a clearly edited video a clip of what happened makes no sense to me,” Maxwell said.
“I don’t understand why they would inflame the situation in that sort of way.”
Asked if after viewing the footage, the family and attorneys believe that People was armed with a gun that night, Crump said they need more evidence and will not just take the word of authorities.
“The family wants to verify everything independently,” Crump said.
The family, Crump said, was shown “a slowed down edited version of a circle” that was said to indicate Peoples was holding a gun.
“The family is saying can we verify this? What happened leading up to all of this taking place?” Crump said.
“We’ve always maintained that the witness that was there with Jabari said there was no gun,” Maxwell said.
Asked about what they thought was edited in the video, Atlanta attorney Liza Parks said, “We first saw a video that was short and appeared to be unedited in real time. There was a second video that was slowed down and stopped, with writing and circles.”
Carr said earlier that the facts and the law, not emotion, dictated the decision to rule the deadly shooting justified.
“I think a good kid made a terrible decision that cost him life,” Carr said.
“What people don’t understand about Stand Your Ground in Alabama, it applies to regular citizens like you and I who are not sworn peace officers,” the district attorney said.
“The law says that if you reasonably believe that you’re about to be assaulted in the first or second degree, you can use deadly force to defend yourself.”
“It also says if you reasonably believe deadly force is about to be used on you, you can use deadly force. Is it reasonable? That is the question,” Carr said.
“Is it reasonable to believe when a person grabs a weapon that deadly force is about to be used on you? That’s what’s depicted in the video.”
Carr said he will not be releasing the video publicly and has not done so in other cases during his tenure as district attorney.
Homewood police said they also will not be releasing the video.
Crump said the case is far from over.
“We’re going to dot every I, cross every T and turn over every stone to give this family the answers,” he said.
“Just because they say it’s over doesn’t mean it’s over.”
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