Allegations of post-shooting police brutality raised at council meeting

Much of the same communication that was on display earlier in the day at a protest/police press conference on last week's police shooting of Leroy Barnes also occurred at the city council meeting: the police released brief factual statement and suggested that Barnes was about to shoot the officers before he was fired on 11 times by police. Several community members expressed their anger with how the police and city handled the matter, the lack of communication.

However, several people also raised allegations that police pushed around several gathering spectators after the shooting, including a 15 year old girl who said she was slammed up against a police car.

I also spoke directly with a young man who claimed to be an eyewitness of the shooting. He said that police fired a bullet in his direction, after he and several other witnesses rushed towards the crime scene.

I stress that these are allegations. I hope that when and if police video is released to the public, some of these allegations can be answered.

As far as I know there haven't been any formal complaints made about the post-shooting behavior of the police at this time. If that is not correct, all of us at the paper would be glad to be informed about them.

Additionally, there was quite a lot of community anger directed towards Chief Melekian's comments on his "gratitude that the police officers involved in the shooting survived," which was met with audible grumbling and angry comments. The people who spoke in the public comment section of the meeting were also none too happy with the fact that the Chief left after his statement, and didn't hear any public comment on the matter.

On the whole, it was unfortunate that because of other issues on the mind of the public, there was little time for others to be heard in the public comment section of the meeting. We seem to be at a time in the city where a number of issues that people feel very passionate about are converging at the same time, leaving the city with far too little meeting time to address every issue as fully as it would like.