File: 56faa567c461880e5c8b456a.jpg (125 KB, 900x500) Image search: [Google]

125 KB, 900x500

>Police in Harrisonburg, Virginia, say their fatal shooting of Michael Pierce Jr. was a justifiable homicide. Yet police are shielding most body camera footage of the incident and refusing to request a third-party investigation.

>The Harrisonburg Police Department says Pierce Jr. pointed a gun to the chest of his neighbor on September 20, 2015. Once police arrived on the scene, officials say he refused to relinquish his shotgun despite more than 40 requests by officers to do so. Police say Pierce Jr. then tried to flee the scene, firing his gun in the process. Police fired back, killing him.

>The department has released some body camera footage of the encounter, but it was from the perspective of an officer standing away from the shooting, Michael Pierce Sr. told WHSV. Upon viewing the footage, he said he did not see his son until Pierce Jr. was dead on the ground.

>"Something just told me that something wasn't right, it just wasn't right," Pierce told WHSV.

>Pierce Jr.'s shooting death was deemed justifiable by local Commonwealth Attorney Marsha Garst in September.

>Harrisonburg police have refused to release body camera footage from other officers involved in the shooting. Those officers' perspectives may shed more light on the encounter, Pierce Sr. said. Despite a Freedom of Information request for all the footage of the Pierce Jr. encounter, police have argued that the video can be shielded from the public, citing exclusions in Virginia state law that allow such recordings to be withheld based on an active investigation and personnel matters.

>Pierce Sr. has countered that, if the case was fairly open-and-shut and his son was obviously in the wrong – as the Commonwealth Attorney and local police have claimed – then releasing all the footage should not be controversial.

https://www.rt.com/usa/337651-harrisonburg-police-pierce-shooting/