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Police Departments Hate to See This Lawyer Coming
George Floyd family attorney on fear, police brutality, and pushing for policy change
“You have to be kind of fearless to take these cases.”
That’s what Attorney L. Chris Stewart tells Momentum regarding his storied career as a legal advisor to families of people killed by police.
Stewart specializes in taking tough cases that have a racial element to them. The public nature of these trials also square Stewart, who is Black, against White supremacists who are threatened by the challenges. It would be easy — and safer — for him to pass on these cases, but instead, he does what is right. Releasing the first raw footage of 50-year-old Walter Scott running away before being shot in the back by a former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager to the world wasn’t easy, it was right. Suing the Baton Rouge police officers who shot 37-year-old Alton Sterling while he laid on his back wasn’t easy, it was right. Getting a Georgia jury to acknowledge the trauma suffered by teen rape survivor Hope Cheston and deem her violation worthy of justice wasn’t easy, it was right.
“I also travel with armed guards. It is what it is.”
