Hunter Brittain: Al Sharpton and Ben Crump take on the case of a white teenager killed by police. here’s why
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Lawyers Crump and Devon Jacob, along with Sharpton and representatives from the NAACP, were invited to attend Brittain’s memorial on Tuesday at Beebe High School in Beebe, Arkansas.
Brittain was shot dead on June 23 by a Lonoke County Sheriff’s Deputy during a traffic check around 3 a.m. outside a local auto repair shop along Arkansas Highway 89 south of Cabot, a suburb of Little Rock, according to Arkansas State Police.
Brittain was taken to a hospital in North Little Rock where he later died, state police said.
Eight days later, on July 1, Lonoke County Sheriff John Staley announced that he had fired Davis because the deputy failed to “activate his body camera in a timely manner” during the shutdown. traffic, in violation of departmental policy.
As a result, no footage from the shooting exists, Staley said in a video statement posted to his office’s Facebook page.
Crump says case could increase support for police law
The lawyer represented the families of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Michael Brown and several other blacks who were fatally shot by police.
But Crump said the image of an unarmed white teenager killed by police will start to change the narrative as the country sees children of all races and ethnicities can be victims of police violence.
“It’s going to be viewed differently because he wasn’t a teenager who was a colored kid,†Crump said. “Because we have always said that our white siblings could not imagine their child being killed by the police. That people are supposed to protect them. But it is a reality that parents of colored children owe it to themselves. literally face every day of their lives. lives. ”
In her eulogy, Sharpton said, “The police issue is not about blacks and whites. It is good and bad.”
Sharpton said it was the first time in his nearly 40-year civil rights advocacy career that he had been asked to deliver the eulogy for a white person who was the victim of police brutality.
Brittain’s death sparked protests outside the sheriff’s office, as well as a so-called “hunter’s law” proposal in the state.
A petition calling on officers and sheriff’s deputies to wear and activate body cameras throughout their shifts has already garnered thousands of signatures.
The George Floyd Act also contains a provision requiring body cameras and calls on federal law enforcement officials to activate them when they answer calls or initiate a shutdown “at the first reasonable opportunity to do so.”
Here’s what Brittain’s family and lawyers say happened
Brittain was driving home with a friend when Davis arrested him, according to Sharpton, who relayed the information to Brittain’s grandmother.
Brittain’s car did not want to park, so he got out of the vehicle to put a “large, bright blue plastic bottle” of antifreeze behind the tire to prevent it from rolling back towards the deputy’s vehicle, a statement said. published Friday by Crump and Jacob.
Davis then shot Brittain three times, the statement said.
When they left, King told KATV, Davis stopped them and Brittain placed a jug of blue oil behind the truck’s tires to “keep it from hitting Davis’ car.”
King said the sheriff’s deputy then fired his gun, “without telling Brittain to stop or get down,” adding that his friend was unarmed.
“They haven’t said a single word to my knowledge. I haven’t heard it and it happened so fast,” King told KATV.
Another officer then arrived at the scene and arrested him, King said.
“(He) told me to come out with my hands up and pull my shirt and stuff, and then he took me to the ground, put the handcuffs on me and dragged me and stuff. I sat in the back of the car cop for about three hours, â€he added.
Jesse Brittain, the teenager’s uncle who also spoke at the memorial, told CNN on “Don Lemon Tonight” on Thursday that the police “haven’t revealed anything to us,” saying the family “were looking for answers.” .
The Lonoke County Sheriff’s Office and the Arkansas Sheriff’s Association did not respond to a request for comment from CNN to confirm details of the incident exposed in the attorneys’ statement.
The sheriff’s office turned the investigation over to state police, who turned their findings over to Lonoke County District Attorney Chuck Graham on Friday, he confirmed to CNN. Graham said a special prosecutor would be assigned to the case.
Prosecutor Coordinator Bob McMahan told CNN on Saturday that he plans to appoint a special prosecutor as early as Monday and said the investigation was ongoing.
“Body cameras are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the only way to view the unbiased facts surrounding an encounter between police and civilians resulting in injury and / or death,” according to the statement from Crump and Jacob. “When agents turn off their body cameras, they turn off their intention to be transparent with her.”
156 Whites, 102 Blacks Killed By Police This Year, Group Says
Crump, who has previously represented white inmates killed or died while in prison, said he had to “help give his (British) family a voice to say that Hunter Brittain’s life mattered”.
“I want to be able to talk to senators on both sides of the aisle and say, ‘It’s not just black kids, it’s also brown kids, white kids, and Asian kids “” said Crump. “It is about our citizens being brutalized or killed because the federal government did not act.”
Sharpton said he didn’t know what to expect when he arrived in Arkansas for Brittain’s memorial, but knew he had to “take the risk” knowing it was an important moment.
“I think there were maybe (300) or 400 people there, maybe 20 black people, and the fact that they gave me five or six standing ovations showed that it was a real possibility for us to create a bridge, a real movement of police accountability based on race and class, â€said Sharpton, adding:“ As I said in the eulogy, if Hunter had been a man rich in another part of the white community, would they have shot him like that? ”
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