About 300 protesters took to the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, in a fourth night of demonstrations on Friday, calling on authorities to "release the tapes" of the fatal police shooting of a black man, hours after his family released its own video. Protesters gathered after nightfall in a small park and others chalked the names of police shooting victims from across the country on a street, but there was no sign of the violence that marked demonstrations earlier in the week.
Protesters marched under the eye of armed National Guard troops, chanting "Resist the police" along with calls for videos of Tuesday's shooting of Keith Scott, a 43-year-old father of seven, to be made public. Charlotte police have claimed that Scott was armed with a gun, which the family has denied.
Police officers and protesters, both on bicycles, led the way through streets closed to traffic. Marchers briefly entered an interstate highway running through the city but quickly returned to the local streets. The two-minute video recorded by Scott's wife, Rakeyia, includes audio of her pleading with officers to hold fire as they confront Scott in a parked car outside a Charlotte apartment complex.
Scott's death was the latest in a string of police killings of black men in America, which have unleashed protests and riots across the country and led to international criticism of the United States' treatment of minorities.
Over the last two years, protesters have filled streets from Milwaukee to Minneapolis, from Ferguson, Missouri, to Baltimore. Protesters have also taken to the streets in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where police officers were shot and killed by gunmen who claimed to be avenging the deaths of black men unjustly slain by law enforcement.
