Alton Sterling. Photo via Facebook
According to East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar C. Moore III, the cops involved in the shooting of Alton Sterling don't feel like they were in the wrong. "The officers feel that they were completely justified," Moore said after a press conference Wednesday, according to the Advocate.The officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II of the Baton Rouge Police Department, have been put on paid administrative leave following the routine police call that turned fatal Tuesday when the two cops approached Sterling, pinned him up against a car, and then shot him while he was on the ground.The graphic incident was caught on camera phones from multiple bystanders and has since gone viral. In the videos, Sterling does not appear to threaten the cops or have a weapon. The investigation into the incident has been handed over to the US Department of Justice, and Baton Rouge Police Chief Carl Dabadie Jr. has encouraged anyone with information or recorded accounts of the incident to submit them to the US District Attorney's office.Sterling's death is just the latest in a long string of fatal shootings of unarmed black Americans involving police officers. After the cell phone footage made the rounds on social media Tuesday evening, protestors in Louisiana hit the streets chanting "Black lives matter!"and demanding justice for Sterling.Salamoni's father-in-law, James Durdin, has defended the police officer's innocence, telling the New York Daily News that his son-in-law was just following his training, and claiming that protestors have used the media coverage to promote their political agendas."It burns my you-know-what when it's—usually the black people—that try to make an agenda out of this," Durdin told the paper. "What I'd like to see is them with no police at all, so they can know what it's like not to have them."Read: Alton Sterling Is the Latest Black Man Killed by Cops on Camera
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