What we know about the police killing of Black Air Force member Roger Fortson [View all]
The police killing of a Black Air Force service member in his own home is drawing renewed scrutiny to the deadly violence that US law enforcement routinely and disproportionately uses against Black Americans.
On May 3, an officer responded to a call about a domestic disturbance and knocked on the door of US airman Roger Fortson’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Newly released body camera footage shows Fortson, 23, opening the door and holding a handgun pointed downward. Within seconds of the door opening, and without asking him to drop his weapon, the officer fired multiple shots at Fortson’s chest. Fortson later died of the gunshot injuries at a nearby hospital.
The body camera footage has raised new questions about the officer’s use of fatal force and his reason for visiting Fortson’s apartment in the first place. Fortson’s family has pointed to evidence suggesting that police went to the wrong unit and have emphasized that the shooting was unjustified. In an initial statement about the incident, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department claimed that the shooting was in self-defense. The Sheriff’s Department has since said that the officer did not go to the incorrect apartment and that it won’t be concluding whether the shooting was justified until a state investigation is complete.
Fortson’s shooting is another harrowing episode in the long history of police violence against Black Americans. In 2020, mass protests erupted across the US following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after an officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes. Those followed extensive demonstrations in 2014 after Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The police shooting of Fortson also echoes other cases when law enforcement has killed Black Americans in their homes, including the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.
https://www.vox.com/24153974/roger-fortson-police-killing
Cop shoots him and THEN says "Drop the gun"? Yeah right. And claims "qualified immunity". What a crock.
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