KANSAS CITY, Mo. — In a highly sought meeting with Missouri State Highway Patrol, faith leaders – who claimed they were "dismissed" during their initial request – provided surveillance video of a March fatal shooting to investigators.
Clergy members on Tuesday released the video, which shows Kansas City, Missouri, police officers confronting Malcolm Johnson before shooting and killing him at a BP gas station, on behalf of Johnson's family.
"Again, I say, it was an execution," Pastor Darron Edwards, of United Believers Community Church, said during Tuesday's news conference. "We stand in moral obligation. We want to demand change, and we demand it now."
They would like the officers involved in the shooting fired and to face criminal charges.
"We do believe in police," Edwards said. "But we do not believe in this kind of policing."
But one day later, they took a slightly different tone following a more than hour-long meeting with MSHP.
"We believe from the conversation that this investigation is the best possible hands at this time," Edwards said Wednesday. "We believe that is in due process, and we will wait to see how due process carries out."
And although Johnson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of 22-year-old and police were looking to talk to him about another shooting that led to the fatal encounter, faith leaders said he shouldn't have died the way he did.
"I don't think that anyone deserves murder," Edwards said. "I don't think anyone deserves to die regardless of their past. I believe everyone has a chance at redemption."
Once the highway patrol has completed its investigation, its report and all evidence gathered will go to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, which will determine whether the shooting was justified.
