Photo by Matt Cohen.
Amid an announcement that there’s no police video footage of the incident, there are conflicting reports as to what led to the fatal shooting of Terrence Sterling near Mount Vernon Square on Sunday.
According to Metropolitan Police Department report, an officer saw Sterling driving recklessly near the 1700 block of U Street NW around 4:30 a.m. A few moments later, another officer spotted Sterling at 3rd and M Streets NW. When the officer was exiting the passenger side of his cruiser “to stop the driver,” Sterling “intentionally drove into the passenger door.” As a result, police shot the 31-year-old man, who was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.
But according to Kandace Simms, who was waiting at a traffic light at the scene, Sterling may not have struck the police car on purpose. The cruiser and the motorcyclist pulled up beside her “at the same exact time,” Simms recounts to Fox 5. Sterling attempted to speed off, but he was blocked by the police car. When the officer couldn’t open the passenger side door, which was blocked by the motorcycle, he “rolled down his window and shot twice.”
The motorcycle did strike the cruiser, Simms told Fox 5, “but that is because they blocked him.” Simms added that her windows were rolled down and she didn’t hear the officer issue any commands to the suspect.
In December, the D.C. Council passed a bill allowing District residents to view most footage recorded by MPD officers in public places. Officers wearing body cameras are supposed to turn them on when they begin an encounter with a member of the public.
Yesterday, Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters that the officer’s body camera footage only showed what happened after Sterling’s fatal shooting, according to Fox 5 and WTOP.
This morning, a video surfaced on social media showing San Francisco 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick weighing in on the incident. “It’s become habitual. It’s an issue and needs to be addressed because it continues to happen, and every time it’s administrative leave, that’s not right.” Kaepernick said, according to the Georgetown Patch. The quarterback has recently made headlines for taking a stand (or a knee) against police brutality while on the field.
Over the past 30 days, police captured 55,577 videos, D.C. Police Assistant Chief Peter Newsham told reporters, according to WTOP. In about 10 instances, officers forgot to activate the “new technology,” and officials are “actively going out there and trying to remind our officers to put the body cameras ‘on’ when they’re supposed to.”
