The Staunton Branch NAACP is taking up the basic question that a lot of folks have been asking regarding the officer-involved shooting at the Staunton Walmart on Tuesday night: what happened?
“Transparency is not the enemy of a fair investigation. It is essential to public confidence in one,” said Nadia Ware, president of the local NAACP branch, which issued a release on Friday in which it raised issue with how local authorities “have not publicly explained what precipitated the encounter, the sequence of events leading to the use of deadly force, or other basic circumstances surrounding the shooting.”
ICYMI
- Police: One dead in officer-involved shooting at Staunton Walmart
- Update: Portsmouth man killed in officer-involved shooting in Staunton
All we know on the record at this point is that Montique Treymayne Gaston, 39, of Portsmouth, was shot by a Staunton Police officer at 7:15 p.m. on Tuesday night, that the police officer was not injured, and that the matter has been turned over to the Virginia State Police, which is standard protocol – you don’t want the locals investigating one of their own.
But it also seems like police are using the standard protocol to prevent any scrutiny of what happened leading up to the shooting – indeed, we know nothing, leading to tons of speculation online, which is not going to go away just because the official response is to hide behind the ongoing investigation excuse.
“Our community should not be asked to choose between a careful investigation and meaningful transparency. We need both,” Ware said in a statement in the NAACP release, which notes that “law-enforcement agencies appropriately withheld certain information initially while next-of-kin notifications were being completed. However, now that Mr. Gaston has been publicly identified, significant questions remain unanswered.”
The NAACP made a public call in the release “for the preservation of all potentially relevant evidence, including body-worn camera footage, dash-camera footage if applicable, 911 and dispatch recordings, police radio communications, photographs, civilian recordings, and surveillance footage from Walmart and other nearby cameras or businesses. Where permitted by law and consistent with protecting the integrity of the investigation and the privacy of individuals depicted, relevant video evidence should be released as promptly as reasonably possible.”
“Social media reports indicate that children may have been inside Mr. Gaston’s vehicle at the time of the shooting. The Staunton Branch has not independently verified those reports. If they are accurate, the presence of children raises additional serious questions concerning the circumstances surrounding the use of deadly force and the safety and well-being of the children. We urge investigators to clarify whether children were present and, if so, to ensure that their privacy and interests are protected throughout the investigative process,” the release goes on.
“We understand that an investigation takes time, and we will not speculate about evidence we have not seen,” said Dr. Amy Tillerson-Brown, chair of the Staunton Branch NAACP Legal Redress Committee. “But an investigation taking time does not mean the community should be left without basic information indefinitely. A man died during an encounter with a Staunton Police officer. His family and this community deserve to know what happened, and that answer must ultimately be grounded in evidence that can withstand public scrutiny.”
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Chris Graham
