On Tuesday, President Obama, visiting the flood ravaged city of Baon Ruge, Louisiana, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/obama-louisiana-tour-criticism/">met</a> with family members of three police officers, Montrell Jackson, Matthew Gerald and East Baton Rouge sheriff’s Deputy Brad Garafola, who were killed on July 1y when they were ambushed by Gavin Long, who shot six officers before he was shot and killed by police. East Baton Rouge Parish sheriff’s Deputy Nick Tullier was still on life support into August.
Long apparently <a href="http://wgno.com/2016/08/24/obama-meets-families-of-alton-sterling-slain-officers-in-louisiana-tour/">visited</a> Dallas after the shootings on July 7 in which five police officers were murdered, then posted a YouTube video July 10 in which he asserted that victims of bullying needed to resort to brute force.
The meeting between Obama and the families at a firehouse near a Baton Rouge airport lasted 20 minutes.
Obama also met with the family of Alton Sterling, who was <a href="http://wgno.com/2016/08/24/obama-meets-families-of-alton-sterling-slain-officers-in-louisiana-tour/">killed</a> on July 5 after he was confronted by two police officers after someone called 911 to say that Sterling had brandished a gun, according to Baton Rouge police. The police reported that one officer shot Sterling after Sterling allegedly tried to reach a gun from his pocket.
On July 7, a mere two days after Sterling’s death, Obama issued a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/07/07/president-obama-fatal-shootings-alton-sterling-and-philando-castile">statement</a> commenting on Sterling’s death and the death of Philando Castile, who was shot by police in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and ginned up his efforts to claim institutional racism exists, stating:
<blockquote>Although I am constrained in commenting on the particular facts of these cases, I am encouraged that the U.S. Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation in Baton Rouge, and I have full confidence in their professionalism and their ability to conduct a thoughtful, thorough, and fair inquiry. But regardless of the outcome of such investigations, what&#8217;s clear is that these fatal shootings are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of the broader challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.</blockquote>
Obama has been widely criticized for waiting so long to travel to Baton Rouge; where <a href="http://wgno.com/2016/08/24/obama-meets-families-of-alton-sterling-slain-officers-in-louisiana-tour/">thirteen people have died</a> and more than 60,000 homes have been damaged from the flooding. John Bel Edwards, the state&#8217;s Democratic governor had said he <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/23/politics/obama-louisiana-tour-criticism/">wanted</a> Obama to wait a few weeks before visiting because the entourage and Secret Service personnel accompanying presidential trips would have strained local resources while officials were dealing with the aftermath of the flooding.

Obama Visits With Families Of Baton Rouge Cops and Alton Sterling

Alton Sterling

Barack Obama

Police

President Barack Obama is planning on meeting with Alton Sterling&#8217;s son, despite facts showing that Sterling may have in fact reached for his gun.
The Washington Examiner <a href="http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obama-to-meet-with-alton-sterlings-son-thursday/article/2596450">reports</a> that according to Sterling&#8217;s attorney, Cameron Sterling will meet with Obama on Thursday and will also ask Obama a question at a town hall on Thursday.
<a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7226/7-things-you-need-know-about-alton-sterling-pardes-seleh">Alton Sterling</a> was killed on July 5 after being shot during an altercation with police, who had been told that Sterling was pointing a gun at someone.
The details of the case are still emerging, but a search warrant affidavit has concluded that Sterling might have attempted to reach for his gun, which he was possessing illegally.
&#8220;While the officers were attempting to subdue the subject the officers observed the butt of a gun in the subject&#8217;s front pants pocket,&#8221; Detective R. Cook wrote in the affidavit. &#8220;When the subject attempted to reach for the gun from his pockets the officers fired their police issued duty weapon at the subject to stop the threat. The subject was shot multiple times and did not survive his injuries.&#8221;
Cook also wrote that the officers had used their tasers on Sterling when he wasn&#8217;t following their orders.
Not that it matters to Obama&#8211;his <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7411/7-disgusting-things-obama-said-while-hijacking-ben-shapiro">disgusting speech</a> at the memorial for the five police officers murdered in Dallas TX made clear that he&#8217;s only interested in promoting his race-baiting, anti-cop agenda that his been a theme throughout his entire presidency. Other examples include:
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/632/obama-endorses-cop-hating-black-lives-matter-aaron-bandler">Saying</a> the police &#8220;acted stupidly&#8221; in the arrest of Cambridge professor Henry Louis Gates.</li>
<li><a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obama-if-i-had-a-son-hed-look-like-trayvon/">Saying</a> &#8220;if I had a son, he&#8217;d look like Trayvon.&#8221;</li>
<li><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/28/president-obama-freddie-gray-s-death-not-new-and-we-shouldn-t-pretend-it-s-new">Saying</a> &#8220;this has been going on for a long time&#8221; after Freddie Gray&#8217;s death.</li>
</ul>
Obama&#8217;s meeting with Sterling&#8217;s son will be another way for him to forward that agenda.

Obama to Meet With Alton Sterling Family, Despite Facts Emerging That Show Sterling May Have Reached For His Gun

On Tuesday, President Obama descended on Dallas to hijack the memorial service for five slain police officers. He&#8217;d planned to do this for days &#8211; his White House stated in advance that Obama would get political.
But for the first few minutes of Obama&#8217;s address, it appeared that he might take stock of the moment and hold himself back.
Then it all collapsed.
Here are the seven worst moments of his latest opportunistic, highly political, egregiously inappropriate address:
1. Equating The Murders of The Dallas Police Officers With The Killings of Alton Sterling And Philando Castile. This is a trap into which the left has fallen consistently this week. It&#8217;s lazy thinking, and more importantly, it&#8217;s morally repugnant. The police officers murdered in Dallas were targeted because of their race. We know that for a fact. That is not speculation. They were targeted because they were white. We know virtually nothing about the Alton Sterling and Philando Castile cases. The police allege that Sterling resisted arrest and reached for a gun he was carrying illegally. We have no evidence yet as to what happened with Philando Castile, but there is certainly no evidence that it was a racially-motivated shooting. Nonetheless, Obama said, &#8220;I see people who mourn for the five officers we lost, but also weep for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. In this audience, I see what&#8217;s possible.&#8221; Not all killings are equal. But to Obama, targeted killing of whites is equivalent to police killing blacks in disputed circumstances.
2. Suggesting That Today&#8217;s Police Departments Are Still Rife With The Legacies of Slavery And Jim Crow. The year is now 2016. Arrest statistics match up precisely with crime report statistics. There is no evidence of systemic discrimination against minorities. But that didn&#8217;t stop Obama from stating, &#8220;We also know that centuries of racial discrimination, of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow; they didn&#8217;t simply vanish with the law against segregation&#8230;we know that bias remains. We know it, whether you are black, or white, or Hispanic, or Asian, or native American, or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. We&#8217;ve heard it at times in our own homes&#8230;.No institution is entirely immune, and that includes our police departments. We know this.&#8221; Remember, Obama isn&#8217;t just wrong here &#8211; he&#8217;s saying this in front of the families of officers killed by a black anti-cop, anti-white racist. Despicable.
3. Reeling Off Meaningless Statistics To Indict Police. Obama&#8217;s favorite game is to pretend that minorities are unfairly targeted by police, without citing higher rates of criminal activity among minorities. Here was Obama today &#8211; again, at a memorial service for fallen officers: &#8220;if you&#8217;re black, you&#8217;re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested; more likely to get longer sentences; more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime.&#8221; Actually, studies show that blacks speed more often; have longer rap sheets and therefore are imprisoned for longer; and are underprosecuted for murder thanks to lack of police resources in high crime communities.
4. Defending The Black Lives Matter Agenda. Dallas police officers were defending protesters &#8211; some of whom were mocking them &#8211; as a black anti-white racist shot at them. That didn&#8217;t stop Obama from backing the protesters&#8217; agenda, without evidence. &#8220;When all this takes place, more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid,&#8221; Obama said. &#8220;We can&#8217;t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members, again and again and again, it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.&#8221; Odd. President Obama dismissed anyone who said he was lying about Obamacare as a kook; he called Tea Partiers terrorists. He&#8217;s happy to deny the experiences of people who actually know what&#8217;s going on in government, but he insists we legitimize the feelings of people who ascribe nasty motives to the cops without evidence beyond the anecdotal.
5. Pushing Government Spending. Obama stumped for more government cash, of course &#8211; but not on cops. On social programs that have failed for generations: &#8220;As a society, we choose to under-invest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment.&#8221; We don&#8217;t &#8220;allow&#8221; poverty to fester &#8211; unless the &#8220;we&#8221; is Obama Democrats who refuse to fund the cops properly so that they can establish law and order in high crime areas, allowing for investment.
6. Pushing Gun Control. Obama dropped this whopper: &#8220;We flood communities with so many guns that it is easier for a teenager to buy a Glock than get his hands on a computer or even a book.&#8221; As I wrote today, you have to have been <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7407/obama-hijacks-officer-memorial-lies-its-easier-buy-ben-shapiro">dropped on your head as a small child</a> to believe this.
7. Ignoring Solutions. This was the key point: Obama thinks that solutions are secondary to talking about feelings. He believes he&#8217;s the national psychiatrist. &#8220;In the end, it&#8217;s not about finding policies that work. It&#8217;s about forging consensus and fighting cynicism and finding the will to make change.&#8221; This is perhaps the most concise summary of Democratic nincompoopery ever spoken. It isn&#8217;t government&#8217;s job to heal your soul. It&#8217;s government&#8217;s job to solve problems like crime. But Obama doesn&#8217;t care about that. He thinks he&#8217;s a soul-healer, and that government is the Great God-Being that can save us all, so long as we open our hearts to it.
Obama is a petty politician. And he used an important stage to air his petty politics. That&#8217;s despicable. And it&#8217;s tragic, too, because he&#8217;s a politician of unique rhetorical capacity. There were sections of his speech in Dallas that were quite beautiful. But he let his leftism swamp his better judgment, and the result was a moral turd sandwich.

7 Disgusting Things Obama Said While Hijacking Memorial For Slain Dallas Police

Dallas

Philando Castile

Shooting

According to an affidavit submitted by the two Baton Rouge police officers who shot Alton Sterling, Sterling <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/la-cops-shot-alton-sterling-claim-gun-butt-visible-article-1.2707940?cid=bitly">reached for a handgun</a>, which was visible in his front pocket, before the officers opened fire, killing him.
The Advocate reports that the affidavit was one portion of a search warrant submitted by the Baton Rouge Police Department to retrieve surveillance video from the Triple S Food Mart.
The affidavit states that Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II confronted Sterling, 37, at the store at roughly 12:30 a.m. on July 5. Sterling refused their order to place his hands on the hood of a car. The officers first used stun guns on Sterling because they &#8220;were attempting to subdue the subject,&#8221; but then &#8220;observed the butt of a gun in (his) front pants pocket.
The affidavit asserts that Sterling &#8220;attempted to reach for the gun from his pocket, the officers fired their police-issued duty weapon at the subject to stop the threat. The subject was shot multiple times.&#8221;
Meanwhile, Triple S owner Abdullah Muflahi alleged that police stole a surveillance tape from the store and locked him in his car for four hours. He <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/man-alton-sterling-death-sues-cops-stole-video-article-1.2707524">filed a lawsuit</a> against the police department. Muflahi stated:
<blockquote>
I felt like a criminal at the time, and there&#8217;s one of the detectives that I knocked on the window and told him it was really hot and I asked if I could sit outside by the car. And he just got really angry and started saying &#8216;you need to chill the f&#8211;k out until we get this because we&#8217;re handling something right now. It wasn&#8217;t right and I shouldn&#8217;t have been treated like I was the one who shot the guy. They didn&#8217;t handcuff me or read me any rights. They just put me in the back of a car. The seat was really hot and it felt like I was sitting on hot coals.
</blockquote>
Joel Porter, Muflahi&#8217;s attorney, snapped, &#8220;Not only did Sterling lose his life but my client lost his liberty. They act like this is a police state, like it&#8217;s North Korea, like they can do this without impunity. This was done in order to intimidate my client. They did not want him to tell the truth.&#8221;
<blockquote>
(Sterling) &#8220;attempted to reach for the gun from his pocket, the officers fired their police-issued duty weapon at the subject to stop the threat.&#8221;
Affidavit from Baton Rouge police officers who shot Alton Sterling
</blockquote>
Blue Lives Matter explains that it was quite possible Sterling was reaching for his gun when he was shot; their analysis can be seen <a href="http://bluelivesmatter.blue/second-alton-sterling-video-vindicates-cops/">here</a>.

BREAKING: Louisiana Cops Say Alton Sterling Reached For His Gun, Gun Butt Was Visible

On Friday, Matt Lewis penned a well-considered, moving piece about his realizations regarding police treatment of black Americans. Here&#8217;s <a href="http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/08/a-confession/">what he writes</a>:
<blockquote>
In the era of Facebook Live and smart phones, it&#8217;s hard to come to any conclusion other than the fact that police brutality toward African-Americans is a pervasive problem that has been going on for generations. Seriously, absent video proof, how many innocent African-Americans have been beaten or killed over the last hundred years by the police&#8212;with little or no media coverage or scrutiny? There&#8217;s no telling the damage this has done to us collectively, not to mention the specific families and individuals that were victimized. And, of course, the long-term psychic damage transcends the physical. All sorts of negative externalities can be expected of someone who rightly feels he&#8217;s living under an occupying army.
</blockquote>
Lewis goes on to indict white Americans for turning a blind eye to anti-black police brutality: &#8220;This default assumption that the police officer was always right is, I&#8217;m sure, what a lot of well-meaning and decent middle class white people were raised to believe&#8230;. Those days are gone. Decent Americans cannot turn a blind eye to police abuse; they just didn&#8217;t really believe the it was happening.&#8221;
Lewis apparently wants to, at least in part, reverse the presumption of decency and innocence for cops policing black communities. This is somewhat understandable when you realize that in a cop-suspect confrontation, someone will be presumed guilty by the public without further evidence &#8211; either the cop or the suspect. Generally, the public acknowledges that the presumption runs in favor of the cop. In light of cellphone footage, however, Lewis wants to consider flipping that presumption. While acknowledging that most cops aren&#8217;t racist, he says that &#8220;police brutality toward African-Americans is a pervasive problem&#8221;; that&#8217;s advancing the argument that if we see a piece of cellphone footage, we should immediately assume the significant possibility of racism, without any further evidence. This accusation toward cops is simply too vague. What level of presumption of decency should cops receive? Lewis doesn&#8217;t really say.
To support his argument, Lewis seems to advance four basic premises:
<ol>
<li>Smart phone footage demonstrates that police treat minorities differently;</li>
<li>Police aren&#8217;t punished often enough for racist behavior;</li>
<li>White people who refuse to acknowledge either of the prior two premises are part of the problem;</li>
<li>Even if there&#8217;s a wrongful perception in the black community that (1) and (2) are true, that requires a solution.</li>
</ol>
Three of these four arguments are deeply problematic.
First, smart phone footage is by nature anecdotal. It does not reflect statistical trends. We can all acknowledge that the footage of the aftermath of Philando Castile&#8217;s shooting is absolutely heartbreaking and horrifying &#8211; and looks terrible for the cop. That does not mean that such incidents are commonplace. If they are, we need actual evidence of that fact.
Beyond that, cell phone footage also tends to be selective. We don&#8217;t know what happened before Philando Castile was shot, or when he was shot. We just know what happened after he was shot. Drawing hard and fast conclusions based on that might be a major mistake.
Furthermore, because cell phone footage is simply footage of behavior, there is almost never a way to tell what&#8217;s going on inside the heads of the officers. Can you watch the Philando Castile footage and determine that the cop is a racist? If so, how? How can Minnesota&#8217;s governor read the mind of the cop and say that this stop would have gone differently for a white man, without evidence? Does he know the cop?
And isn&#8217;t it possible &#8211; probable, actually &#8211; that the cellphone footage we see from racial incidents tends to be more commonplace and worse because (a) people in common confrontations with cops tend to grab their cameras for such confrontations more often, and (b) cops tend to act more aggressively &#8211; in ways that many white people don&#8217;t acknowledge &#8211; in high-crime areas, which are disproportionately minority?
Second, Lewis make the case that cops aren&#8217;t punished enough. In this case, statistics aren&#8217;t enough &#8211; we need to see which cops are let off the hook for crimes they should not be. Americans generally hate when this happens (see, for example, the Rodney King trial). Simply stating that cops regularly &#8220;get away with it&#8221; more often than other citizens is unhelpful if we don&#8217;t know the circumstances in which the cops shot suspects.
Third, Lewis implies that white people must acknowledge the feelings of black people about the police or risk becoming part of the problem. That&#8217;s certainly true with regard to historic black treatment at the hands of the police &#8211; everyone acknowledges that blacks were treated far more brutally by police until recent decades. But that&#8217;s not true now. In fact, saying that cops aren&#8217;t friendly and aren&#8217;t there to help when it comes to black people is damaging to black people, who require more law enforcement in their communities, not less. Innocent black people more than any other population require societal reinforcement that the cops are there to help &#8211; otherwise, black communities do not receive the help they need, thanks to widespread perceptions that the police are the problem.
Like Lewis, I was brought up to believe that the cops are friendly and want to help. Obviously, that isn&#8217;t always true &#8211; there are some terrible cops, just as there are some terrible members of every profession. Criminals cops should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, of course.
And it would be foolish to deny subjective experiences with police. But by the same token, it&#8217;s foolish to pretend that police are automatons. They are far more likely to behave brusquely in situations in which they are more likely to encounter aggression. Isn&#8217;t it more probable that if I lived in a high-crime community, in which police were at significantly higher risk of personal danger, I&#8217;d receive different treatment than if I lived in a low-crime community? Doesn&#8217;t that have less to do with race than the level of criminality in the community being policed?
That&#8217;s cold comfort to innocents who have to deal with harsher treatment from police. But that doesn&#8217;t meant he solution is to label the police racist, or to accept the notion that the presumption of innocence doesn&#8217;t apply with the cops.
Which brings us to the fourth premise: that we require a solution based on perceptions of racism. Certainly that&#8217;s true. And Lewis&#8217; suggestion that we all back body cams is fair &#8211; pretty much everyone already does. But it doesn&#8217;t go far enough. If we truly want to end the widespread fear of cops, pretending that statistical outliers are representative of broad trends doesn&#8217;t do it. When the president goes on television and states that Alton Sterling and Philando Castile weren&#8217;t &#8220;isolated incidents,&#8221; he&#8217;s not just statistically wrong &#8211; he&#8217;s forwarding an immoral view of the universe that will result in more dead people, both cops and innocents. The solution to cop-community conflict is safe communities. That requires more cops. And instead of ripping all cops, the solution is shockingly simple: rule of law. When cops do bad things and we have evidence of it, we prosecute them and condemn them. When cops don&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t. Intellectual honesty and compassion &#8212; on all sides &#8211; is the best solution to a problem that won&#8217;t be solved with grand statements about systemic problems.

What Cell-Phone Videos Can’t Tell You About Police Treatment of Blacks

In Fresno, California on June 25, an unarmed 19-year-old man was shot to death by police. <a href="http://abc7.com/news/new-video-shows-portion-of-deadly-fresno-police-shooting/1416666/">According to the police</a>, he ran from the police, led them on a half-mile chase, and then refused to show his hands. They say he made a &#8220;conscious effort to conceal one hand behind his back, then in his waistband, as he exited the truck, and walked away from officers,&#8221; that he said he &#8220;hated his life,&#8221; then approached officers and was shot. There is video of the shooting. The shoot was likely good.
This story has received no national press. The 19-year-old man was white.
In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, two police officers responded to a 911 call about a black man, <a href="http://www.dailywire.com/news/7226/7-things-you-need-know-about-alton-sterling-pardes-seleh">Alton Sterling</a>, allegedly threatening people with a gun. Sterling had a long criminal history. The cops arrived, Sterling resisted arrest; they tackled him to the ground and attempted to pin him. Two videos show them pinning down the left side of his body, struggling with his right hand. One of the officers shouts, &#8220;he&#8217;s got a gun&#8230;you f***ing move, I swear to God!&#8221; The two officers then shout &#8220;Gun!&#8221; and fire into his body, killing him.
There is not enough available evidence on the tapes to see whether indeed Sterling was reaching for his gun, which he was carrying illegally.
Near St. Paul, Minnesota, Philando Castile was driving with his girlfriend &#8211; both of them are black &#8212; when they were pulled over by an officer. We don&#8217;t know what happened next, but there is video after the officer has shot Castile. The girlfriend calmly claims that the officer asked Castile for ID, then shot him when he reached for it: &#8220;He let the officer know that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him in his arm.&#8221; The officer screams, &#8220;I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out.&#8221; Castile had a gun in the car, and a concealed carry permit. To an admittedly untutored ear, it sounds like the officer may in fact be panicking, knowing he&#8217;s made a horrific error in judgment.
But we don&#8217;t know what happened, because there is no video. That has not stopped the press from breaking into spasms of race-baiting ecstasy. Castile&#8217;s mother told CNN, &#8220;Sometimes you have those that, you know, sit up and say that there is no more&#8230;profiling. You&#8217;re still saying there&#8217;s no profiling, but [there] is. We&#8217;re being hunted every day. It&#8217;s a silent war against African-American people as a whole&#8230;.We&#8217;re never free.&#8221;
These two cases are not the same. But they are being treated as two halves of the same whole by the press and the politicians, who deem them evidence of America&#8217;s racist police culture. This is asinine.
First, there&#8217;s not enough evidence to see what happened in either case.
Second, even if the cops acted wrongly, there&#8217;s no evidence of racist intent.
Third, even if there were evidence of racist intent, that would not indict police officers across the country, who shoot white suspects in confrontational situations more often than they shoot black suspects.
But narrative matters more than facts. And so we can&#8217;t wait for all the evidence to out &#8211; we have to jump to our respective ideological positions. If we suggest that more evidence be allowed to surface, we&#8217;re called racists who do not care sufficiently about innocent black men being shot by the cops.
And so Americans cave, and give in to their worst instincts when it comes to criminal cases: they jump to conclusions in a single bound. And those conclusions are often wrong. In the Michael Brown case, for example, 57 percent of black adults said that Officer Darren Wilson should have been convicted of murder in August 2014. He was innocent. 56 percent of white Americans said they needed more information.
There was one right answer there; there was one wrong answer. But the American people are constantly pushed to give the wrong answers on police shootings involving black victims.

In Alton Sterling and Philando Castile Cases, Why Can’t We Just Wait For Evidence?

Race

Update: Newly released footage shows cops had been trying to grip Sterling&#8217;s right hand, presumably so he wouldn&#8217;t reach into his right pocket where his gun was. The video shows Sterling pinned to the ground as the officers shot him several times. After Sterling&#8217;s eyes roll back, one of them is seen yelling, &#8220;f******ck!!&#8221; 

<div class="media_embed"><iframe frameborder="0" height="260px" width="320px"></iframe></div>

The two officers in question, <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/blane-salamoni/">Blane Salamoni</a> and <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/howie-lake/">Howie Lake II</a>, are on administrative leave over the incident and are being investigated by the FBI. Officials have not released details on their motives yet, but activists are calling for their arrest. 
37-year-old Alton Sterling was fatally shot during an altercation with police enforcement outside Triple S Food Mart in Baton Rouge, Louisiana at around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, after police had received a call that he had been pointing a gun at someone. 
Video footage shows two officers wrestling with a black man wearing a red shirt, pinning him to the ground. 
&#8220;He&#8217;s got a gun!&#8221; one of the officers is heard <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/alton-sterling/">yelling</a>, followed by &#8220;You f***ing move, I swear to God!&#8221; before four to six shots were fired into Sterling&#8217;s chest. Abdullah Muflahi, a store owner who had witnessed the scene, said he saw the officers pull out a gun from his pocket. Sterling died at the scene.
<div class="media_embed"><iframe loading="lazy" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315px" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jBZPCDqymyo" width="420px"></iframe></div>
The video of Sterling&#8217;s struggle with the police went viral since last night, causing national outrage among racial advocacy groups. Police say the video had not been sent to the department, but released to the online media. Black Lives Matter <a href="http://www.infowars.com/black-lives-matter-supporters-threaten-to-riot-over-alton-sterling-death/">threatened</a> to riot over Sterling&#8217;s death, and the president of the NAACP&#8217;s local branch <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/06/us/baton-rouge-shooting-alton-sterling/">called</a> for the Baton Rouge police chief and mayor to resign. The two officers have been <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/alton-sterling/">placed on administrative leave </a>since Sterling&#8217;s death.
&#8220;Alton was a respected man. He was beloved in the community. He did not deserve the treatment and this excessive force that was exerted on him by the police department,&#8221; Edmond Jordan, his attorney, told CNN. &#8220;Alton was out there selling CDs, trying to make a living. He was doing it with the permission of the store owner, so he wasn&#8217;t trespassing or anything like that. He wasn&#8217;t involved in any criminal conduct.&#8221;
As details of the current investigation unravel, here are seven things you need to know about the late Alton Sterling:
1. He was the father of five children from different partners. 
Quinyetta McMillon, the father of his oldest son Cameron (15), said she feels hurt for her son, whom she has raised. 
&#8220;As a mother, I have now been forced to raise a son who is going to remember what happened to his father, that I can&#8217;t take away from him,&#8221; McMillion told reporters this morning. &#8220;He is at an age of understanding. I hurt more for him and his loss as a parent. One of the greatest fears is to see your child hurt and know there&#8217;s nothing you can do about it.&#8221; 
McMillon said she didn&#8217;t think Sterling should be judged for his past. Details about the mother[s] of his four younger children are still unclear. 
2. He had a criminal history consisting of sexual intercourse with a minor under age 17 in 2000. 
<a href="http://www.icrimewatch.net/offenderdetails.php?OfndrID=571319&amp;AgencyID=54068">Records</a> show Sterling was registered as a sex offender in 2004 for &#8220;carnal knowledge of a juvenile&#8221; on September 20, 2000 in his home state of Louisiana. Details of the offense have not been released.
3. In addition to selling CDs, Sterling &#8220;worked as a cook,&#8221; his friends said.
Muflahi said Sterling had been selling CDs outside his store and in the area nearby for the past six years. His friends Calvin Wilson (56) and David Solomon (60) <a href="http://theadvocate.com/news/16311988-77/report-one-baton-rouge-police-officer-involved-in-fatal-shooting-of-suspect-on-north-foster-drive">said</a> he had another job as a cook.
&#8220;Whatever he cooked, he cooked enough for everybody,&#8221; Wilson said.
4. He pleaded guilty to illegally carrying a weapon and possession of marijuana in 2009.
Sterling was <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/alton-sterling/">sentenced for five years </a>in prison for marijuana possession with the intent to distribute and for carrying an illegal weapon that had a controlled dangerous substance. 
5. He lived at a shelter.
Sterling had been living for the past few months at the Living Waters Outreach Ministries at 4156 W. Brookstown Dr. at the order of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff&#8217;s Office, due to his criminal offenses. His fellow residents at the shelter, Wilson and Solomon, said they helped him &#8220;sell CDs&#8221; at the home from time to time. Wilson added that about five people were living there full-time. 
Sterling had registered at the address in July and a probation officer had checked on him in August, only to find from the center manager that he hadn&#8217;t lived there for two weeks.
6. A warrant was sent for his arrest in 2015 for failure to register as a sex offender, among other crimes.
By April, the local district attorney&#8217;s office filed charges against Sterling for his failure to register as a sex offender. His court records shows he was accused of other crimes since 1996. He had pleaded guilty to aggravated battery, simple criminal damage to property and unauthorized entry, and domestic abuse battery.
7. Sterling had been carrying a gun illegally at the time of his death.
Sterling&#8217;s family members say he was on probation at the time of his death and was <a href="https://www.everipedia.com/alton-sterling/7731857/">not allowed to carry a gun</a>. Muflahi <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/alton-sterling-article-1.2700893">said</a> Sterling began carrying the gun recently after his friend was mugged. He had been incarcerated and released on parole shortly before his death. 
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