Page 22 - Florida Sentinel 4-19-19

National
Police Release Body Cam Footage Of Shooting Danquirs Franklin
The body camera footage shows two officers approach- ing 27-year-old Danquirs Napoleon Franklin outside a Burger King on March 25, after witnesses called 911 to re- port a man with a gun acting in a threatening manner.
The police video shows offi- cers repeatedly yelling for Franklin, who is black, to put his gun down. He’s seen squat- ting by the open door of a car, facing someone in the passen- ger seat.
“Sir, put the gun down,” says the officer wearing the body camera. “Drop the gun!”
Franklin doesn’t move as police approach him, the video shows. As they shout at him, Franklin can be seen raising his right hand with an object in it, still facing the person in the passenger seat.
He lowers his hand right around the time when the first of two shots by the officer can be heard on the video. “Shots fired!” the officer yells into her radio. About 40 seconds had passed from the time the offi- cer exited her cruiser to when
Franklin was shot.
She then reaches under his
body and can be seen picking up a handgun, saying: “I gotta pick up the gun.”
The officers tell the person in the passenger seat, “Let me see your hands,” and the per- son holds them out on the dashboard. In response to an email seeking the person’s identity, police spokesman Lt. Brad Koch replied, “This is still an active criminal investi- gation.”
Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NAACP chapter, summed up her reaction to the video in four words: “Hurt, disgust, anger, frustration.” But she said anyone who chooses to protest in response to the re- lease should do so peacefully.
She said the officer didn’t follow procedure and “didn’t view Danquirs Franklin as aman,butsawhimasadan- ger.”
“This female officer shot this man while he was adhering to her commands,” she said in a phone interview.
DANQUIRS FRANKLIN Robert Dawkins of Safe
Coalition NC said violence and taking to the streets won’t solve anything, and he doesn’t anticipate it happening.
A handful of protesters gathered in a downtown Char- lotte park around 6 p.m., with more expected. Clergy mem- bers were also slated to meet at a local church before making their own pleas for peaceful protest.
Before the release of the footage, Charlotte leaders held
a news conference to urge community members to be calm after seeing what’s on it. They noted that protests had been planned even before the video’s release. No protesters were seen at the Burger King on Monday afternoon, shortly after the video came out.
Mayor Vi Lyles urged the community to engage in a peaceful discourse about what happened.
“It is in moments like this that we can open for a discus- sion and discourse. We can talk about what’s on that video,” she said. “But what I al- ways think about is how we re- spond as a community will reflect how we honor the memory of Danquirs Franklin.”
Police Chief Kerr Putney said the video is hard to watch, but it shows that Franklin was armed.
“There is clear and com- pelling evidence that Mr. Franklin is armed. You will see that” on the video, Putney said at a news conference.
Putney said Monday that
the video is consistent with what police have said all along, that Franklin refused to drop his weapon and an officer fired after perceiving a lethal threat.
Before the shooting, one witness who called 911 said that an armed man had en- tered Burger King and tried to start a fight with employees.
“Can you please send some- body quickly? Please. He got a gun. ... He’s pointing it,” she said.
But since the shooting, some have questioned whether po- lice were too quick to use lethal force, including students who walked out of a school to protest the shooting days after it happened.
The officer who shot Franklin was identified as Officer Wende Kerl, who has worked for the department since 1995. She has been placed on administrative leave while the shooting is investi- gated by detectives, who will turn their findings over to the district attorney. A department spokesman has declined to re- lease Kerl’s race.
Suspect In Black Church Fires Charged With Hate Crimes
Notre Dame’s Age, Design Fueled Fire And Foiled Firefighters
NEW YORK (AP) — Is there anything firefighters could have done to control the blaze that tore through Paris‘ his- toric Notre Dame Cathedral sooner?
Experts say the combina- tion of a structure that’s more than 850 years old, built with heavy timber construction and soaring open spaces, and lack- ing sophisticated fire-protec- tion systems led to the quick rise of flames Monday, which jeopardized the entire cathe- dral before firefighters brought the blaze under con- trol.
“Very often when you’re confronted with something like this, there’s not much you can do,” said Glenn Corbett, a professor of fire science at John Jay College.
NOTRE DAME CATHEDRAL
Firehoses looked over- matched as flames raged across the cathedral’s wooden roof and burned bright orange
for hours. The fire toppled a 300-foot (91-meter) spire and launched baseball-sized em- bers into the air.
While the cause remains under investigation, authori- ties said that the cathedral’s structure — including its land- mark rectangular towers — has been saved.
Some of the factors that made Notre Dame a must-see for visitors to Paris — its age, sweeping size and French Gothic design featuring ma- sonry walls and tree trunk- sized wooden beams — also made it a tinderbox and a dif- ficult place to fight a fire, said U. S. Fire Administrator G. Keith Bryant.
With a building like that, it’s nearly impossible for fire- fighters to attack a fire from within. Instead, they have to be more defensive “and try to control the fire from the exte- rior,” said Bryant, a former fire chief in Oklahoma and past president of the Interna- tional Association of Fire Chiefs.
“When a fire gets that well- involved it’s very difficult to put enough water on it to cool it to bring it under control,” Bryant said.
And while there’s a lot of water right next door at the Seine River, getting it to the right place is the problem, he said: “There are just not enough resources in terms of fire apparatus, hoses to get that much water on a fire that’s that large.”
OPELOUSAS, LA. (AP) — The white man suspected in the burnings of three African American churches in Louisiana will remain in jail, denied bond Monday by a judge, as state prosecutors added new charges declaring the arsons a hate crime.
Twenty-one-year-old Holden Matthews, the son of a sheriff’s deputy, entered his not guilty plea via video conference from the St. Landry Parish jail. The judge set a September trial date.
In denying bail, state Dis- trict Judge James Doherty sided with law enforcement officials who said they wor- ried Matthews would try to flee the area or set more fires.
“We felt that he was an im- mediate risk to public safety,” said Louisiana Fire Marshal Butch Browning. “In my mind, I felt another fire was imminent.”
Testifying in court, Brow- ning outlined a litany of evi- dence, including some new details of the investigation, that he said tied Matthews to the crime, including images on Matthews’ cell phone in which Browning said he “claimed responsibility” for torching the three black churches over 10 days.
HOLDEN MATTHEWS
Matthews was arrested Wednesday on three charges of arson of a religious build- ing. Prosecutors filed docu- ments Monday adding three more charges, accusing Matthews of violating Louisiana’s hate crime law, confirming that they believe the fires were racially moti- vated, a link authorities had previously stopped short of making.
Browning said federal of- ficials also are considering fil- ing additional federal hate crime and arson charges against Matthews.
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