Police, DA said Charlotte protester assaulted officer with broom. Judge disagreed.
After police testimony and arguments from the district attorney, a judge found that a 24-year-old was not guilty of assaulting a police officer during a Charlotte “No Kings” protest in June.
Court documents show that a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer arrested Shannon Riley, who now goes by Arthur, on June 14 — the day of the protest. Officers accused Riley of hitting an officer’s foot with a “red aluminum broom stick” that had a sign attached to it, according to court documents.
At a hearing last month, Mecklenburg District Court Judge Keith Smith found Riley not guilty.
The Charlotte Observer was not in the courtroom for the hearing but asked attorneys to comment.
Riley’s public defender, Selin Roberts, told The Charlotte Observer that the assistant district attorney played body-worn camera footage of the reported incident and the officer testified in court Dec. 19. The testimony was inconsistent with the previous written report and portions of the body-worn camera footage, Roberts said.
At an October hearing, Roberts had asked for the case to be dismissed and said Riley suffered a concussion during the arrest.
Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather’s Office told the Observer that ”firsthand accounts are often blurred by the number of events occurring all at once” during protests. Spokesperson Mike Stolp in a statement said the office “believes the officer’s testimony was corroborated by what was on video and that the evidence was abundantly sufficient to convict.”
If convicted, Riley — who does not have a criminal record — could have faced a maximum sentence of up to 60 days for the Class A1 misdemeanor, according to state sentencing guidelines.
The “No Kings” protests in America are to oppose what demonstrators describe as the authoritarian policies of President Donald Trump.
