Charlotte Police Release Official Footage of Fatal Keith Lamont Scott Shooting

Charlotte police released footage Saturday of the fatal shooting of Charlotte resident Keith Lamont Scott, including both dashboard camera footage and body camera footage. (Warning: the footage is NSFW.)

In the dashboard camera footage, embedded below, Scott takes several steps away from the car before an officer fires four shots at him.

The footage does little to help clarify the question of whether or not Scott was armed, as police have claimed in their defense of the shooting.

During a press conference late Saturday afternoon announcing the release of the footage, Charlotte Police Chief Kerr Putney said that police approached Scott because he was in possession of marijuana, but that the situation escalated when police allegedly saw Scott was also in possession of a gun. When asked if any officers would be charged in Scott's shooting, Putney said he would "absolutely not" directly charge any officers, though added that there is no "definitive visual evidence that [Scott] had a gun in his hand and that he pointed it at an officer."

He added that Scott presented a "safety issue" by possessing both marijuana and a handgun, which is what drew officers' attention to his vehicle.

The police department purged its Twitter page Saturday evening of all posts related to the press conference and referencing the footage.

Footage filmed by Scott's wife, released Friday, shows police attending to Scott's lifeless body on the pavement after being shot. It did not show the shooting itself.

Scott's death sparks days of ongoing protests in Charlotte about police brutality.

CMPD have issued a detailed update of the case, which you can read below:

This story is developing.