Shooting of Roger Fortson: What we know about the police killing of a Black Air Force member

The killing of a black Air Force soldier in his own home by police is bringing renewed attention to the deadly force that U.S. law enforcement routinely and disproportionately uses against black Americans.

On May 3, an officer responded to a domestic disturbance call and knocked on the door of U.S. Airman Roger Fortson’s apartment in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Newly released body camera footage shows Fortson, 23, opening the door and holding a handgun pointed downwards. Within seconds of opening the door and without asking him to drop his weapon, the officer fired several shots into Fortson’s chest. Fortson later died of gunshot wounds at a nearby hospital.

The body camera footage has raised new questions about the officer’s use of deadly force and his reason for visiting Fortson’s home in the first place. Fortson’s family has pointed to evidence that suggests police went to the wrong unit and stressed that the shooting was unjustified. In an initial statement on the incident, the Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Department claimed that the shooting was in self-defense. The Sheriff’s Department has since said the officer did not go to the wrong apartment and that it will not decide whether the shooting was justified until a state investigation is completed.

Fortson’s shooting is another shocking episode in the long history of police violence against black Americans. In 2020, mass protests erupted across the United States following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after an officer knelt on his neck for over nine minutes. These followed widespread demonstrations in 2014 after Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager, was shot and killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri. The police shooting of Fortson also mirrors other cases in which police have killed Black Americans in their homes, including the shooting of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky.

Police violence has continued unabated in recent years, with 2023 seeing the most killings by police officers in more than a decade. Black people made up 13 percent of the U.S. population this year but accounted for 27 percent of people killed by police, according to Mapping Police Violence, a nonprofit that tracks this information.

This persistent trend has criminal justice advocates worried that the problem will not improve without significant policy changes, which lawmakers still need to invest in.

What we know about the shooting

The shooting occurred after an unidentified woman called police at Fortson’s apartment complex to report a domestic disturbance. In body camera footage provided by the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department, a police officer can be seen approaching the complex and speaking to a woman on the property about a couple who were reportedly arguing in one of the apartments.

The woman leads the officer to the area of ​​the complex where she says she heard the fighting and gives him Fortson’s unit number, 1401. The officer approaches Fortson’s door and knocks on it without identifying himself. After receiving no response, the officer knocks twice more and says twice, “Sheriff’s Office, open the door.”

Fortson then opens the door and has a gun in his hand pointed at the floor. Almost immediately, the officer shoots Fortson several times and he falls down. At that point, the officer says, “Drop the gun,” and Fortson responds, “It’s over there.” I don’t have it.” The officer calls 911 and Fortson is taken to a nearby hospital, where he succumbs to his injuries .

According to Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Fortson’s family, Fortson’s girlfriend was on FaceTime with him throughout the encounter. Per Crump, she said he was alone in the apartment. Crump added that Fortson heard the officer’s first knock and got his gun because he couldn’t see who the person at the door was. And Fortson’s family said the gun was legally owned.

In a CNN interview, Crump notes that the woman at the apartment complex may have made a mistake and directed officers to the wrong unit. Fortson’s girlfriend also posted a portion of her FaceTime video via Crump, which includes audio of the aftermath of the shooting and police checking the apartment for additional people.

It’s not entirely clear from the audio recordings, but it doesn’t appear that police found anyone else in the apartment. Crump said she will hold a separate news conference at a later date.

The body camera footage has also raised concerns among advocates and his family about why the officer shot Fortson so quickly before asking him to drop his weapon.

“It is very disturbing that the deputy did not give verbal commands and fired multiple shots within a split second of opening the door, killing Roger,” Fortson’s family said in a statement from Crump. “Was the officer trained to give verbal warnings since the officer did not tell Roger to drop the weapon before he fired? Did the officer attempt to initiate life-saving measures? Was the officer trained to deal with law-abiding citizens who are registered gun owners?”

The following week, the Okaloosa Sheriff’s Department placed the officer involved in the shooting, whose identity was not released, on paid administrative leave and said the Florida Department of Law Enforcement would conduct a full investigation.

Fortson’s family has emphasized how dedicated he was to his work in the Air Force, how committed he was to his siblings and how he hoped to one day buy his mother a house. “He fought for everyone,” said his mother, Chantemekki Fortson.

Black Americans are disproportionately killed by police. This included shootings in people’s own homes.

Fortson’s shooting reinforces the deadly violence Black Americans have experienced at the hands of police.

A 2020 Harvard School of Public Health study found that black people are more than three times as likely as white people to be killed by police in an encounter. Last year, the fatal police beating of Tire Nichols in Memphis and the fatal police shooting of Ta’Kiya Young in Blendon Township, Ohio, were two prominent examples of this ongoing trend.

Fortson also joins the tragic list of black Americans killed by police in their own homes. Those incidents include the fatal shooting of Botham Jean in 2018 by a police officer who entered the wrong apartment thinking it was her own, and the police killing of Atatiana Jefferson in 2019 when officers thought she was an intruder in her own home.

These killings point to ongoing institutional problems in policing that experts say will require much deeper systemic reforms than those pursued since mass protests in 2020.

In the wake of these demonstrations, certain cities have cut police budgets, and some states have approved reforms to better standardize use-of-force reporting by law enforcement. However, police still have the authority to use deadly force in many cases where it is not necessary, says Daniela Gilbert, director of redefining public safety at the Vera Institute of Justice. And there is still a lack of legal accountability and transparency regarding police misconduct.

“It’s bad and sad, but it’s not shocking that we’re still being killed at higher rates,” Karundi Williams, CEO of re:power, a group dedicated to training Black political leaders, told NBC News in 2022 . “When we experience moments of racial injustice that are brought into the national spotlight, outrage increases and people take to the streets.”

“But then the media tends to move on to other things and awareness decreases,” she continued. “But we never really got to the bottom of the problem.”