Downpours dampened a protest held Friday evening in Savannah in the wake of Thursday’s officer-involved killing of a black man in police custody.
A few hours after city and religious leaders vowed to stand united for peace, about 100 people marched in the rain through West Savannah where the fatal shooting of 29-year-old Charles Smith occurred, chanting, “No justice, no peace,” and singing, “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round.”
The protesters, who marched to the downtown police precinct for the second day in a row, stayed there for less than an hour. And no officers were visible near the demonstration.
Still, questions continued to swirl around the circumstances of Smith’s death, and answers from law enforcement remained few.
An autopsy was conducted Friday on Smith’s body, but details won’t be released until after the results are discussed with the Chatham County district attorney’s office, said GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang. She declined to speculate on how long that would take.
Repeated calls Friday to the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department were not returned, and a representative in the department’s public information office said all questions should be directed to the GBI.
The GBI is handling the criminal portion of the investigation at the request of Interim Police Chief Julie Tolbert.
“This is not a great day in Savannah,” Mayor Edna Jackson said Friday at an impromptu forum at Second St. John Baptist Church. “This is a sad day. This is a day we should all be thinking about the family.”
Jackson said she and Tolbert referred the investigation to the GBI because, “We can’t investigate us. This is an investigation that will be open and above-board and transparent.”
Police had arrested Smith on outstanding warrants and put him in a patrol car with his hands cuffed behind his back, Lang said Thursday in a written statement. Smith was able to move his hands to the front of his body and kick out a window of the patrol car, Lang said.
According to the Associated Press, Lang said officers noticed that Smith had a gun when he tried exiting the patrol car and he was shot by an officer. A gun was found under Smith’s body and the incident was captured on video, Lang said.
But many in the community are asking how anyone could be arrested, handcuffed and placed in a patrol car, yet still have a gun. Witnesses said they did not see Smith with a gun after he kicked out a window of the patrol car, escaped out the window and fell to the ground, still handcuffed.
Maurice Williams, 27, said a police officer exited the patrol car as Smith kicked the window a third time. Williams said he heard the officer say, “Do you want to die?” while he shot Smith in the legs. He said the officer fired his weapon three more times, striking Smith in the head and back.
Officer David Jannot, a 10-year police department veteran, has been put on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.
Francys Johnson, president of the Georgia Chapter of the NAACP, led Friday’s protest on Augusta Avenue. He said while officer-involved shootings are challenging to any community, Savannah is not Ferguson, Mo., the scene of days of citizen unrest after Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. In that case, Johnson said, the community did not have the benefit of diversity in its city government and police department.
“We can show America what a united community looks like,” Johnson said.
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