Montgomery Police Shooting Q&A With Mayor Heats Up
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A Montgomery community is still looking for answers after police shot and killed a man last week.
The mayor held a public Q&A session to put down rumors about what happened to Greg Gunn.
City Hall was packed as people came down to ask the mayor and Police Chief Earnest Finley face to face exactly what happened.
The most vocal of the day was Gunn’s brother.
Many in the crowd were just as emotional as Gunn.
Since all the evidence was turned over to the state bureau of investigations, the mayor and police chief are missing a lot of the facts as well. But we did learn something new.
“Will you release the officers name?” “Yes ma’am,” said Mayor Todd Strange. “His name is A.C. Smith, he was hired in 2012.”
He confirmed that Smith is in fact white.
The mayor says there’s a standard protocol for events like this.
“Today he is off and at some point he may come back to administrative duties, but not patrol duties,” said Strange.
There were calls to remove white officers from areas like Mobile Heights, but he says that’s not going to happen.
Ultimately he’s asking for patience until the investigation is over.
“It’s out of our hands. We have done everything possible to have this done in a third part independent investigation. Some of the comments that are being made today we believe not to be correct but we don’t have any factual evidence to say that because we did not investigate,” said Strange.
Former city councilman Terrance Dawson had his share of questions, but he says today was an important step for the city.
“We don’t want this to be a Ferguson incident. This is Montgomery, the birthplace of the civil rights movement. And today I’m just happy at this point that we can all meet together as rational people,” said Dawson.
We still don’t know anything about the body camera officer smith was wearing.
The mayor says any rumor that the video was deleted is false and the SBI has everything they could provide.
