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Almost two years ago, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old father to five children, was held down and shot to death by two white police officers while selling CDs outside of a convenience store in Baton Rouge. On Tuesday, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced that the state would not proceed with a prosecution of the officers, almost 11 months after the Trump’s Department of Justice declined to press federal charges.




The shooting was captured by cellphone footage, which showed one officer tackling Sterling, then both of them holding him down on his back. Someone shouts, “He’s got a gun!” which is followed by the sound of gunshots.

Outside of the courthouse, Sterling’s aunt stated, “He was murdered by two white racist police officers. He was murdered like an animal...You saw the videos, but they say they didn’t see nothing wrong.”


If the two officers who killed Sterling had been charged and convicted, that would have been an anomaly. That they won’t face any charges fits into the larger national pattern of racist police who shoot black people getting away with it, over and over again. And as proven once more, no amount of video evidence is going to change that.