The Metro: A contested police shooting, and a city’s own transparency law
Two accounts of the same shooting, and no video to break the tie. A Detroit officer shot 18-year-old Alonzo Lee-Perkins before the Ford Fireworks; he survived and faces charges, and the body-camera footage is sealed by a union lawsuit — Free Press reporter Violet Ikonomova on what’s known and what isn’t.
Hours before the Ford Fireworks last month, a Detroit police officer shot 18-year-old Alonzo Lee-Perkins several times during a foot chase. Police say officers were trying to stop him over a suspected gun, that the officer feared for his safety, and that a gun was recovered.
His family doesn’t dispute that he was carrying one — they say he’d been shot before and was afraid for his life. What they dispute is what he did with it. His grandmother says he never took it out, that it was found only after he was shot and fell, wounded in the back.
He survived and was later charged with carrying a concealed weapon, resisting police, and felony firearm, and was released on bond.
Much of what happened is still contested, and the body-camera footage that might settle it has not been released. A city law is supposed to guarantee that footage, but it is frozen by a police union lawsuit.
Violet Ikonomova, an investigative reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has been following this story. She also spent last year documenting a pattern of police shootings. She sat down with Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss whether this case fits that pattern and what we still do not know.
Hear the full conversation using the media player above.
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