The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) today sent a letter to Jay E. Town, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, requesting a federal investigation of the police shooting of E.J. Bradford, Jr.         

Bradford was shot and killed at a mall outside of Birmingham, Alabama on Thanksgiving night. Local police initially claimed that he was responsible for a shooting that wounded two people at the mall, but they soon reversed this claim and admitted that he was not the perpetrator. An autopsy later revealed that he was shot three times from behind. Local police have ignored repeated requests from Bradford’s family, the community, and advocates like LDF for the release of body camera footage from the incident.          

“By baselessly and wrongly blaming Mr. Bradford for the shootings before conducting a competent investigation, the HPD has caused tremendous pain to Mr. Bradford’s family and to the local community, resulting in days of protests and a deepening mistrust that will only make an investigation into this matter by local authorities more difficult,” says the letter, which was signed by LDF President and Director-Counsel Sherrilyn Ifill.          

Read the letter here.

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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF

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