CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Charlotte's police chief said Thursday that he had no intention of releasing video footage of the fatal police shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, whose death sparked unrest that left more than a dozen police officers and civilians injured and one protester dead.
"Transparency is in the eye of the beholder," Chief Kerr Putney told reporters. "If you think I say we should display a victim's worst day for public consumption, that is not the transparency I'm speaking of."
Police have said that Scott, a 43-year-old black man, emerged from his vehicle with a gun and refused orders to drop it; Scott's family members contend that he was not armed.
Activists have demanded police make the footage public. The city convulsed with violence for a second night Wednesday as protesters waded into the streets and demonstrated outside downtown hotels and police in riot gear fired tear gas. One man was shot and killed.
Clergy and local activists who had protested the police shooting of Scott said Thursday they were planning more vigils and community meetings in hopes of quelling the violence.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who had already declared a state of emergency, announced Thursday that he had initiated efforts to deploy the National Guard and state troopers.
By early Thursday evening, military Humvees were parked in the streets near businesses.
"We cannot tolerate any type of violence," McCrory said at a news conference Thursday, praising local police and first responders for "standing tall and showing incredible courage and patience."
"We're not going to let a few hours give a negative impact on a great city," he said.
Many businesses remained closed Thursday as major corporations _ Wells Fargo and Bank of America among them _ urged employees to stay away from their downtown offices. Cleanup crews and volunteers worked overnight to board up damaged buildings and sweep shards of glass from sidewalks. Protesters had thrown rocks at hotel and restaurant windows and sprayed "Black lives matter" on a wall outside a Hyatt hotel.
Meanwhile, a North Carolina congressman apologized Thursday for a statement he made in an interview with the BBC, in which he said the violence in Charlotte stems from protesters who "hate white people because white people are successful, and they're not."
Rep. Robert Pittenger, a Republican whose district includes parts of the city beset by protests, said later it was his "anguish" over the violence that led him to respond "in a way that I regret."
Sharply different narratives have emerged not only around the original police shooting, but on the protests it sparked.
Police said one protester was shot Wednesday and died the next day, according to The Associated Press, which identified him as 26-year-old Justin Carr.
The victim was shot by another civilian, the city said on its Twitter account.
Several protesters, however, said they saw police fire rubber bullets that hit the man.
Two officers were left with minor eye injuries, three officers were treated for heat-related conditions, and eight civilians were injured, Putney said. Police arrested 44 protesters for failure to disperse, assault, and breaking and entering.
"This has been a difficult couple of days for the city of Charlotte," Mayor Jennifer Roberts said at a news conference Thursday. "The events that we saw last night are not the Charlotte that I know and love. In Charlotte we have a long tradition of working together to solve our problems, of working collaboratively, and I urge everyone to continue that tradition."
Roberts pledged that the city would conduct a thorough investigation into the shooting. "It's important that we have a full and transparent investigation of the original incident and we are working very hard in a collaborative way to ensure the integrity of that investigation."
North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation has already begun to investigate Scott's shooting to determine whether charges should be filed against the officer who shot him. The local district attorney's office said in a statement that it has been in contact with the FBI and U.S. Justice Department, providing them "information to assist with their review of the matter."
Authorities did allow Scott's family to view two police videos of the shooting captured by a body camera and a dashboard camera, according to Justin Bamberg, an attorney for the family.
In a statement Thursday, he said the videos show that Scott calmly followed orders to exit his vehicle and that it was impossible to see whether he was holding anything.
He was shot while slowly walking backward with his hands at his side, the statement said.
Bamberg urged police to make the videos public.
Scott did not own a handgun, let alone carry one, Bamberg said.
"We still don't know if there was or was not a gun even there," he said. "There are witnesses who are saying that no gun was there. There are witnesses who say that a gun was put there. There are witnesses who say that a gun may have been pulled out of the car. There is too much talk. We are here to get answers."
Putney said the police video did not give him "absolute definitive visual evidence" that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun. But the "totality of all other evidence" supported "the version of the truth" that the police had given about Scott's death, he said.
"There's your truth, my truth and the truth. Some people have already made up their minds about what happened," he said.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called Roberts as well as the mayor of Tulsa, Okla., where police shot an unarmed black man last week, to offer his condolences and guidance, the White House said in a statement.
Protests began quietly Wednesday afternoon in downtown Charlotte, with chants of "Black lives matter!" and "No justice, no peace!" but escalated as demonstrators moved into a central commercial district flanked by expensive hotels and the Spectrum Center sports arena.
As crowds amassed near an Omni hotel, police in riot gear surrounded the protesters, who began knocking over pots and plants along the hotel driveway and trying to get inside. Some protesters jumped on vehicles.
At about 8:30 p.m., Carr man was shot. Police say emergency workers had difficulty reaching him because of the thick crowds.
"We couldn't get medics in," Putney said Thursday. "At that point, because of the size of the crowd, we deployed tear gas."
Both the Ritz-Carlton and Omni shut down, with Ritz-Carlton employees barricading themselves inside with furniture. At the Omni, where a streak of what appeared to be blood could be seen on a lobby entrance window, staffers let police in to make arrests and question protesters.
Police said officers did not fire shots. Through much of the evening, they were ordering protesters to back off, shouting: "Lives are in danger!"
But protesters continued to throw bottles. Looters broke windows and ransacked the Charlotte Hornets store at Spectrum Center, a block from the site of Wednesday night's shooting. Windows were smashed at the NASCAR Hall of Fame, a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant, the Charlotte Observer newspaper offices and the Westin Hotel.
By 11 p.m., dozens of demonstrators remained near the shooting scene, not far from the Omni, as police continued to confront protesters, detaining a few.
One demonstrator hoisted a sign saying, "End State-Sanctioned Murder." On a street corner, a young couple snapped selfies, while a man repeatedly shouted, "Jesus saves!" Nonlethal grenades could be heard on occasion in the background.
A small fire was lighted near a set of streetcar tracks but was quickly put out.
"Last 24 hours of violent protest worst I have ever seen in Charlotte," tweeted state Rep. Kelly Alexander Jr., who urged authorities to release police dashboard-camera video of Scott's shooting "ASAP."
By Thursday morning, the Charlotte Area Transit System, which had closed its downtown transportation hub and shut down bus and streetcar routes during the violence Wednesday, had restored services.
Scott was confronted Tuesday by police outside a Charlotte condominium complex.
Brentley Vinson, the officer police identified as having shot Scott, is also black. He has been placed on administrative leave, a routine procedure following an officer-involved shooting.
Police say Vinson was at a University City apartment complex looking for a suspect with an outstanding warrant _ not Scott _ but came upon Scott shortly before 4 p.m. Scott got out of the truck with a gun, according to police, then got back in the truck. Police said that they told Scott to drop the gun but that he got back out of the vehicle with the gun and "posed an imminent deadly threat" before the officer shot him.
