Attorney Bakari Sellers Laments ‘Cyclical’ Police Killings, Demands Release of Andrew Brown Bodycam Video: ‘We’re Going to Destroy the System’

Bakari Sellers, who is representing the family of Andrew Brown Jr. after he was killed by Pasquotank County deputies, vowed to “destroy the system” during a Monday press conference — also demanding police to release the full bodycam footage of the incident.

Sellers, who is representing the family alongside fellow civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Harry Daniels, began his remarks by wishing he were somewhere else.

“I wish Ben Crump wasn’t so famous,” he added. “I wish we had a week where Black folk weren’t just dying at the hands of law enforcement.”

Sellers lamented that Derek Chauvin’s trial was “interrupted” by the killing of Daunte Wright, which was quickly followed by the deaths of Adam Toledo and Ma’Khia Bryant.

“And now we find ourselves here in Elizabeth City,” he continued. “And so, I’m tired. Not very often in my legal career do I get the eyes of all of you all. And you know what else I’m tired of doing, I’m tired of grieving and crying. I’m tired of seeing the videos, then we protest, then we have a funeral. Then we have another shooting. We grieve, we cry, we protest.”

Sellers went on to ask viewers to do something different following Brown’s killing, instead of maintaining the cycle of grieving and protesting, and then beginning all over again.

“I want us to destroy the system that keeps putting us in situations like this,” he said, prompting applause from the audience.

Sellers then condemned senators who have failed to sign the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, calling out Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) by name.

“I’m tired of it being cyclical because I stand next to a young man who joins another club of Black people that are not able to grow up with their father,” he said. “So, I’m asking you to do something a little bit different today. They want us to go in the streets and they want us to get mad and they want us to chant and March because they know in 17 days we got to go back home, and it’s going to happen all over again.”

He then criticized the North Carolina General Assembly for not releasing the full bodycam footage of Brown’s shooting, despite promising to have done so by 11:30 a.m. ET.

“I ask you all to just be patient a little more because the truth is going to come forward,” he said. “But while we’re out here, I need you to get on the phones. And I want you to go ahead and call Joe and Kyrsten. I want you to call every Republican senator or Democratic senator and make sure that they’re passing policy so that these families don’t have to be here like.”

“I’m standing with Gwen Carr behind me, I never thought I’d be doing that. The mother of Eric Gardiner is here. Only in Black communities do we have mothers of people who lost their children due to gun violence. No other community has a club like that. But we do, and so today I ask you all to think a little bit differently about how we’re going to break this cycle. We’re going to destroy this system and we’re going to reimagine what it should be so we don’t have no more deaths like this. And the first step, Mr. Sheriff, is to simply do one thing: Show us the video.”

Watch above, via CNN.