Officer Who Shot Alton Sterling Fired: Let's Look Back

Another video was made public regarding the Alton Sterling situation, and the officer who shot him, Blane Salamoni, was fired.  The shooting was justified, and the officers were right acquitted.

Let's go over the situation here.  Police were called, not because Sterling was selling CDs, but because they got a call about him waving a gun and threatening to shoot someone.  It turns out that the person he was threatening to shoot was a homeless man.  The new video shows officer Howie Lake II talking to Sterling by a car, as Salamoni is walking up.  The footage is shown from Salamoni's body cam.  Salamoni puts his hand on the back of Sterling's neck in an aggressive manner, and then as Sterling wasn't following orders he put a gun to the back of his head and threatened to shoot him if he didn't put his hands on the car, and then when they got him to do that, Salamoni told him not to move of he was going to shoot him.  It is important to note that the officers were dealing with a man that had a gun on him, and while they couldn't see the gun at that time, they got a call about him showing the gun, so it was very important for him to get his hands on the vehicle, and not to move so that he didn't pose a threat.  Sterling was also clearly resisting arrest.

Going back to videos that was already release in 2016.  One video shows him in a struggle with police, and Sterling's right hand is making a movement.  To me it seems that he is reaching for the gun.  Some other people may see it differently, but the gun was pulled from his right pocket after he was shot, and his right arm was moving in that direction right before they shot him.  Some people were using the fact that the gun was in his pocket to further incriminate the police officers, and make the situation seems less threatening for them, but the fact is you can shoot a gun while it's in your pocket.  The shooting of Sterling was completely justified.  Despite the fact that Salamoni threatened to shoot Sterling in the head early on, he wasn't very eager to shoot him.  The officers tried several times to defuse the situation.  They tased him, and held him down on the ground trying to arrest him.  So even after Salamoni threatened to shoot him if he didn't put his hands on the car, Sterling still resisted arrest, and it took for him to actually reach for a gun, for Salamoni to pull the trigger.  So all of that talk about shooting him if he didn't put his hand on the car, or if he moved was tough talk, it's not an indication of how badly he wanted to shoot Sterling.  Sterling also had numerous drugs in his system, as exposed in his autopsy.  Who knows what role that played in Sterling behavior.

So Alton Sterling was resisting arrest, and most likely reaching for his gun. Yet somehow according the BLM movement, he was the good guy in that situation.  Firing Salamoni is like some kind of a compromise.  What he did isn't something he should have been fired for, and he wouldn't have been fired it he did that to a white man under similar circumstances.