A small crowd gathered Tuesday at Underground Atlanta to demand Police Chief George Turner quit “hiding” surveillance video of a police shooting that killed a woman last April.
Police say Alexia Christian was shot after she opened fire on two officers. Felecia Christian, the woman’s mother, wants to view the video to see if it supports the Atlanta Police Department’s official account.
Felecia Christian and supporters criticized Turner for promising a transparent investigation but not releasing any information to the family or public for nearly five months.
“What is Chief Turner hiding?” said Dean Steed, an organizer for the Racial Justice Action Center, an activist group. “You have to wonder how long it takes for APD to get its story straight.”
As is routinely done in officer-involved shootings, Turner turned over surveillance and dash-cam videos, and the results of an internal investigation into the shooting, to Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard on Tuesday, according to police spokeswoman Beth Espy.
Howard will decide whether to present the case to a grand jury, which would then decide if there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing.
Police have described the shooting as justifiable. On the afternoon of April 30, two officers, a rookie and a training officer, arrested Christian, 26, on car theft charges. She was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of their patrol car near the Underground police precinct, according to the official account.
Christian managed to obtain a handgun she had concealed on her body and opened fire at the officers, who were standing outside, Major Darin Schierbaum told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April. The officers returned fire, hitting Christian at least twice, Schierbaum said.
Witnesses saw officers pull Christian from the patrol car and try to save her life. She died at Grady Memorial Hospital.
State Sen.Vincent Fort, an activist in police shooting cases. said he believed Turner had delayed turning over the investigation because he hoped the shooting would fade from the public attention.
Fort said Tuesday the issue has been whether the police would be transparent enough to build public trust — something the chants during the day suggested had not happened.
“I’m not saying it was a bad shooting,” he told The AJC.
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