Bodycam Video Shows Cop Opening Fire On Black US Air Force Officer As Soon As He Opens Door

A Florida sheriff released body camera video this week where he showed reporters the bodycam footage retrieved from a police officer from his station shooting a US Air Force officer, a killing the latter’s family denounced as “unjustifiable”.

Okaloosa County Sheriff Eric Aden presented the video hours after the family of US Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson and their attorneys held a news conference in which they disputed the police version of the story which says the deputy acted in self-defence.

The name and race of the deputy has not yet been revealed. He has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.

The police rejected assertions made by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Fortson’s family. Ben Crump has claimed that the police officer in question went to the wrong apartment, covered the door’s peephole and did not announce himself.

The video shows the deputy arriving at a Fort Walton Beach apartment building on May 3 and speaking to a woman outside who described hearing an argument.

The deputy then went up an elevator and walked down an outdoor hallway.

The video shows the deputy banging on the door and stepping aside, seemingly out of view of the door. Twice he shouted: “Sheriff’s office! Open the door!”

Fortson opened the door and could be seen holding what appeared to be a handgun pointed down toward the floor. The deputy shouted, “Step back!” and fired off shots. He then shouted, “Drop the gun! Drop the gun!”

“It’s over there,” Fortson said.

“Drop the gun!” the deputy yelled back.

“I don’t have it,” Fortson said, lying on the ground.

The deputy then called paramedics on his radio.

“We remain adamant that the police had the wrong apartment as Roger was on the phone with his girlfriend for a substantial amount of time leading up to the shooting, and no one else was in the apartment,” the statement by Crump and the deceased’s family said.

Mr Make It Happen

The US airman has left behind a 10-year-old sister, a younger brother and his mother. He graduated from the Ronald McNair High School — a school that mostly has Black American students situated in metropolitan Atlanta’s DeKalb County where roughly half of students don’t graduate in four years.

“Where we come from, we don’t end up where Roger ended up,” his mother, Chantemekki Fortson, said.

She held a large framed portrait of her son in dress uniform as she and the lawyer representing her son held a press conference. Fortson had joined the Air Force in 2019, the same year he graduated from Ronald McNair High School.

An official speaking to the Associated Press said that Fortson was a gunner aboard an AC-130J. He earned an Air Medal with combat device, which is typically awarded after 20 flights in a combat zone or for conspicuous valour or achievement on a single mission.

The official said that the award reflects that Fortson completed flights in a combat zone and took specific actions during one of the missions to address an in-flight emergency and allow the mission to continue. Fortson rose to the rank of senior airman. He was stationed at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach.

“He was trying to give me everything that I never could get for myself,” his mother said.

“He was trying to help his family have a better life,” Crump said Thursday.

That meant serving as a role model for his 16-year-old brother, André, his mom said, saving up to try to buy her a house and getting her a new car. His nickname was “Mr. Make It Happen.”

Chantemekki Fortson recalled that her son, then in high school, accompanied her in the ambulance to the hospital when she was giving birth to her daughter and tried to tell the doctor how to deliver the baby.

The girl and his brother were always in his thoughts.

André was not coping well, his father, Keith Vann, said in a phone interview Friday.

“He’s basically like a zombie, some people say,” he said.

Vann remembered Fortson as a quiet boy who didn’t get in any trouble.

“He was very respectful,” he said.

Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator, where one of his roles was to load the gunship’s 30 mm and 105 mm weapons.