"This was a case of harassment gone bad," Gwendalyn Jenkins told the Militant. Jenkins is a 45-year resident of the neighborhood known as East Stuart where Scales was killed. She was one of many residents who used the occasion to give voice to long-standing complaints about harassment of the Black community by Stuart's police department.

Charlie Matthews of the NAACP reported that he had just come from Pensacola, Florida, where the NAACP is also part of protests against police brutality. On February 26 Andrena Kitt was killed by Pensacola undercover agents. She was 21 years old and unarmed. This week her mother helped lead a protest in Pensacola of 250 people who marched past the spot where Kitt was killed on their way to the police station. Marchers protested the killing of 14 people over the past 10 years by the police.

The meeting here was initiated by the Florida NAACP to launch an investigation of the killing with an eye towards possible legal action around civil rights violations. Matthews, Florida Area Director of the NAACP, said, "This is not a family issue. It is a community concern. It's time for the citizenry to take a stand." He announced that nine full-time NAACP investigators will be coming to town on a fact-finding mission to question every aspect of the events surrounding the killing.

The news media has widely publicized a police account of the shooting designed to exonerate the officer and make the victim look like a criminal. According to these stories the police officer was dragged down the street for several blocks as he reached into the driver's side window of the car to turn off the ignition switch while Scales was driving away. The car crashed at the end of the street and McLain was thrown to the ground. According to the story, he quickly recovered, grabbed his gun, and shot Scales seven times.

Many residents at the meeting pointed to the racism that permeates the police force, which has no Black officers. Pressed on this the police chief said he had one new officer in training at the police academy who is Black. He said there were 42 police officers now, all of whom are white.

"Profiling is going on," one graduate of the local high school complained. "It's not just the police department. It starts in the school system as well. They pass us on. They want us to play basketball, but they don't care if we know how to read. They are sending our kids to prison for nothing."

"Your officers are like a time bomb ticking," Jenkins told the police chief. "As a parent I am fearful that my children will run into one of your trigger-happy cops."

She described an incident where McLain had demanded to speak to her son while he was standing outside the house. When he refused to talk to the cop, McLain threatened him. "That's OK, you don't have to talk to me now, but I'll see you later," she quoted the cop as saying. "This is what our children are dealing with," she said.

Assistant State Attorney Robert Belanger told the press, "At this point it doesn't look like there was any criminal conduct on the part of the officer." A lawyer for McLain named David Golden justified the killing, saying, "You have to pull the trigger and continue to pull the trigger until the threat is over." Scales was unarmed at the time he was killed. The preliminary police autopsy showed that two of the seven bullets that hit Scales were "instantly fatal."

Rebecca Arenson and Andy Towbin contributed to this article.
 
 
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