On July 5, police fatally shot a black 37-year-old man named Alton Sterling in in front of a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he was selling CDs. The event has been gaining widespread attention and controversy after a cell phone video that captured the event was uploaded and spread online.
The video starts with Sterling and two police officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, standing near a car. A “pop” sound is heard, and the officers push Sterling against the hood of the car, then pin him to the ground. Shouts are heard and are followed by 5 bangs of a gun. A second video recorded in higher quality was released the next day. It shows that Sterling was already on the floor with his back on the ground when the officers shot him.
Salamoni and Lake have since been put on administrative leave.
According to community members, Sterling was a respected man. Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the store where Sterling was shot, said that he had known him for six years, and in that time he had never seen a confrontation between Sterling and anyone else.
In the local community, people were outraged. Many gathered at the location where Sterling was shot. Demonstrators crowded the streets as an act of support for the man that was killed in what many think was an unfair act of police discrimination.
“I’m not angry enough to hurt nobody. . . But I’m angry and I’m mad because they took something away from me that I’m never ever gonna get back,” said Sterling’s aunt, Sandra Sterling, to the group.
In addition, Quinyetta McMillon, the mother of one of Sterling’s children stated that, "The individuals involved in his murder took away a man with children who depended upon their daddy on a daily basis. . . As this video has been shared across the world, you will see with your own eyes how he was handled unjustly and killed without regard for the lives that he helped raise.”
This case is especially important to Baton Rouge because African-Americans make up over 50% of the city’s racial demographic.
But it is not only community members who have responded to this event; people all over the world who have seen the video have responded to what many think was an unjust action with vigils and memorials, and many are likening Sterling to other victims of police brutality such as Mike Brown and Eric Garner, who were both unarmed black men that were killed by white policemen, highlighting what many have said to be a racially biased system.
This shooting has sparked a resurgence in the Black Lives Matter campaign with protests that have remained mostly peaceful thus far. It brings light to the possibility of prejudice that lead policemen to act unreasonably and unacceptably, which results in them taking the life of another with complete disregard for those close to the victim.
Although prejudice is a concept that is not likely to be going away any time soon, events like the death of Alton Sterling garner attention from the people and the media, and awareness is a large step in the process of getting rid of the ignorance that causes it.
