National civil rights attorney Ben Crump has joined to fight for any footage to be released in the killing of a beloved Alabama teen who was shot to death by police in a Homewood city soccer park.

Crump, known for his work on cases such as the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, was joined by Birmingham attorneys Leroy Maxwell and Rodney Barganier, Black Lives Matter and other community activists at a Tuesday press conference.

Crump said he is getting involved because 18-year-old Jabari Peoples was doing everything right in life when he was shot to death June 23.

Peoples was a 2024 graduate of Aliceville High School where he was standout track athlete and football player.

Peoples had just finished his freshman year at Alabama A & M where he was studying computer information and criminal justice with hopes of becoming a law enforcement officer, specifically a detective.

He had no prior arrests, Crump said.

“There’s nothing in his history that would suggest that he’s going to try to shoot a police officer,” Crump said.

“This is a tragedy of unimaginable circumstances,” Crump said.

“His mother and father should be given a gold medal for the child that they were raising.”

Maxwell said he’s thankful Crump is joining the legal team.

“In all this tragedy, today is actually a good day,” Maxwell said. “I’m glad we brought in a big gun. We needed it here.”

“One of the things he brings is that coalition,” Maxwell said.

“(The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency) typically acts in a certain way and oftentimes they won’t release these videos under pressure, but they haven’t felt pressure like this in what attorney Crump brings to the table.”

Read full coverage of the case here

Homewood police say a veteran officer, who has not been publicly identified, approached the vehicle to investigate because of a recent increase in criminal activity in and around the city’s athletic complexes.

The officer, police say, smelled marijuana and ordered Peoples and his female friend out of the vehicle.

Police say the encounter ended with Peoples resisting, breaking away from the officer as he tried to handcuff him, and grabbing a gun from the driver’s side door pocket.

The officer shot Peoples, who was pronounced dead a short time later at UAB Hospital.

Peoples’ family and attorney Maxwell disagreed with that narrative, saying that Peoples wasn’t armed and didn’t resist.

The Homewood Police Department turned the investigation over to ALEA, which is standard policy for many officer-involved shootings.

ALEA denied the family’s request to see the footage, saying release of the video footage would jeopardize the ongoing investigation.

There have been several protests following the fatal shooting, including at the Homewood Police Department, ALEA’s office in west Homewood, Homewood City Hall and during the World Police and Fire Games last week in the Birmingham area.

Though Alabama state provides a way for families to view body camera and dash cam videos, the same law also allows law enforcement to withhold the footage for investigative purposes.

Crump said he is grateful for all lawyers who take up the mantle to fight against injustice, to fight against the system for people who others think can be swept under the rug.

“You won’t sweep Jabari Peoples under the rug,” Crump said.

“His family is just asking for answers. Is that so much to ask for?” he said.

“Your 18-year-old son who’s never convicted of any crime, he’s never even been arrested, was doing everything right that you would want for a child and he’s killed by the police, the people who are supposed to protect and serve him. Wouldn’t you want answers?”

The attorneys said trust and transparency are on the line.

“This is very straightforward,” Maxwell said.

“If we’re about trust and transparency, honoring Jabari and his family, honoring the community and honoring the relationship that we want so deeply with law enforcement, it is necessary to release the footage.

“This is not a hard investigation,” Crump said. “I mean, you got a video, you got an autopsy and you got an eyewitness. It shouldn’t take you a year to finish this investigation.”

“Show the video. You can shut all of us up, shut me up, shut Black Lives Matter up, shut up attorney Maxwell, shut up (community activist) Frank Matthews, shut up everybody,” Crump said.

“Show us the officer did nothing wrong. Show us that it was justified.”

“If the officer did nothing wrong, we’ll be quiet,” Crump said.

“We won’t say a word. But if he did something inappropriate, then we want justice for Jabari.”

Crump said the family is seeking to have a private autopsy done before Peoples’ funeral which is set for Saturday at Aliceville City Hall.

“Because we don’t have the autopsy from the medical examiner, the family has to go through extraordinary lengths to have an independent autopsy performed before the funeral and that’s exactly what they are going to do because we need to know,” he said.

“We know the cause of death was a gunshot, we want to know the trajectory, the point of entry, the point of exit.”

Maxwell has said previously that an investigator who conducted a detailed charting of Peoples’ body found he was shot once in the back.

Peoples’ parent, siblings and other family members joined Crump at the press conference at Friendship Baptist Church in Homewood and spoke of their slain son.

“He had a lot of dreams, and he was willing to work for those dreams,” his mother, Vivian Sterling, said.

“Sometimes I thought he wanted to do too many things. He’d pass the airport and say, ‘Mama, I’m going to get my pilot’s license, but I don’t know if I’m going to do it before or after I go into the military.’”

“He wanted three different degrees, computer engineering, electrical engineering, criminal justice,” Sterling said. “He wanted to do all sorts of things, and he knew he could do it.”

“Jabari was one of the brightest kids, one of the loveliest kids,” father William Peoples said. “We don’t know how we’re going to go on without Jabari but we’re going to fight for Jabari until our last breath.”

 Crump said the fight is far from over.

“We refuse to be well-behaved victims,” he said. “Jabari is going to continue to be a priority for us.”