Savannah urged to keep peace after police-involved shooting death

[Ptarmigan]

Savannah urged to keep peace after police-involved shooting death\
http://savannahnow.com/news/2014-09-19/clergy-officials-ask-calm-wake-savannah-chatham-police-officer-shooting-killing#.VBzup0OJoU1

A day after a police officer shot and killed a suspect who was under arrest and handcuffed on a West Savannah street, city and county religious and civic leaders gathered at a nearby church to appeal for calm.

“We’re not here to answer questions, because we don’t have the facts,” said the Rev. Matthew Southall Brown, who called the noon meeting at Second St. John Missionary Baptist Church on Golden Street, just blocks from where 29-year-old Charles Smith was shot to death by Savannah-Chatham police officer David Jannot on Thursday.

Brown asked other ministers in attendance Friday to appeal to their congregations for calmness, and asked them to refrain from commenting before getting the facts of the investigation, which is in the hands of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Another Ferguson unfolding............................ I hope not.

[DumbAss Tanker]

It is going to be pretty challenging to explain the necessity of shooting the guy if he was already in cuffs, this should be interesting.

[SVPete]

From the linked article, here is what is "known" of the shooting and its context:

Smith, who is black, was shot by Jannot, who is white, just after 11 a.m. Thursday on Augusta Avenue between Eagle and Cummings streets. Cyrus Purdiman, assistant special agent in charge of the GBI’s Statesboro office, said Thursday that Smith was arrested on outstanding warrants.

Purdiman said the initial investigation showed that when the officers placed Smith under arrest, he was handcuffed behind his back, and that the arrest was recorded on video. After Smith was placed in the patrol car, Purdiman said, he somehow moved his hands to the front of his body and was able to kick out a window of the vehicle.

Officers told the GBI that as Smith tried to exit the patrol car, they saw he had a gun, Purdiman said.

“This encounter resulted in Smith being shot and killed,” Purdiman said.

Crime scene investigators found a gun under Smith’s body, he said.

If Savannah is lucky and wise, the race-baiter industry will be smarting from their Ferguson smack-down and decline to get involved here, and maybe the full facts of what happened will become known.

[Ptarmigan]

The leftist media wants a race riot.

[dixierose]

I practically live in Savannah (only 15 miles south); and I really don't want to see this get out of hand. I think one thing that may help is Savannah has a black female mayor. As long as Al Sharpton keeps his @ss out of GA, I think it will be OK.

There have been protests, but they've been peaceful.

Here are links to a couple of articles in the Savannah Morning News.

http://savannahnow.com/news/2014-09-20/gunplay-spotlighted-charles-smith-rap-video

http://savannahnow.com/news/2014-09-19/smith-frequent-visitor-criminal-justice-system

[DumbAss Tanker]

From the linked article, here is what is "known" of the shooting and its context:

If Savannah is lucky and wise, the race-baiter industry will be smarting from their Ferguson smack-down and decline to get involved here, and maybe the full facts of what happened will become known.

That version is just going to raise a lot more questions, like how the Hell did they miss a gun, was it really a drop gun, etc., etc.

[SVPete]

That version is just going to raise a lot more questions, like how the Hell did they miss a gun, was it really a drop gun, etc., etc.

Concur, on both counts.

Any claim that the gun found was planted has two problems: the dead guy did the contortions to get his handcuffed hands in front of him; and the dead guy kicked out the car window. Did the dead guy do things that would be additional felonies just for the fun of it? Or as precursors to something like ... using a gun that the arresting officers hadn't found. Not that conspiracy-theory-grade silliness is something paranoid racists would recognize and reject.

As for why the arresting officers didn't find the gun beforehand, that is a good question. Did they fail to search at all? Did they do a perfunctory search? Were they interrupted/distracted? Was the gun hidden somewhere the arresting officers didn't want to go?