Salamoni tackled Sterling and, with Sterling on his back with both officers on top of him, one of the officers appears to yell Hes got a gun! Then shots rang out.
While fatal shootings by police have continued at about the same pace as previous years, according to The Washington Posts database tracking these incidents, these incidents have drawn less national attention and largely faded from the national political debate.
Some fatal shootings still prompt widespread media attention, including the death earlier this month of Stephon Clark, an unarmed black man shot and killed by Sacramento police officers while in his grandmothers backyard. The death of Clark, who was holding an iPhone at the time that police said they mistook for a gun, has given way to extended protests in that city.
Charges against officers for on-duty shootings are uncommon, and convictions in such cases are even more rare. Last week, a Minneapolis police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Australian woman in 2017 was charged with murder and manslaughter. Those charges came about nine months after a jury in Minnesota acquitted the officer who shot and killed Philando Castile during the traffic stop a day after Sterling was killed.
