Community and social justice advocates in Montgomery County are calling for a fair and transparent investigation into the death of Elliott Powers, 46, who was fatally shot by police at a Gaithersburg bus stop in July.
Their calls come after police body and dashboard camera footage from the July 12 incident on Lost Knife Road were released Aug. 7. The footage provided new insight into the interactions officers had with Powers before his death and raised questions for advocates about the effectiveness of police deescalation tactics and racial disparities in their responses.
“Deescalation tactics really need to be defined,” Tiffany Kelly, a local activist and Gaithersburg resident, told Bethesda Today on Tuesday. “We need to figure out why [deescalation tactics are] working for others. When everybody who has died in police custody within the City of Gaithersburg, who have been shot by police, why are they all Black men and Latino men?”…