A small group of protesters gathered Friday at Big Spring Park in downtown Huntsville, asking for the release of the body camera footage following the death of 43-year-old Sterling Keyon Arnold at the hands of police on Sept. 14.

The release of the bodycam footage is vital for police accountability, Iris Billiter, one of the protesters, told AL.com.

“If they don’t release the tapes, then we have no idea what actually happened,” she told AL.com during the protest, which saw the group move across downtown Huntsville shouting various protest slogans.

“If you’re blameless in how you’re carrying things out, there would be no reason why you wouldn’t release the tapes and show the public that the way it was handled was completely above board,” she added.

She called for better transparency with the police and more responsiveness in releasing camera footage, rather than waiting years for the possibility of getting the footage released through court cases.

In Birmingham this week, police released bodycam footage from two different incidents, one in which officers tased and arrested Minor High School band director Johnny Mims and a second in which an officer repeatedly punched a man who had been spitting on people.

In Huntsville, police almost never release bodycam footage, even after controversial shootings or other instances of violence. When the public has seen Huntsville police bodycam of deadly shootings in recent years, it was only after courts intervened to make the videos public.

It took more than three years for the public to see the video of Officer Ben Darby shooting and killing Jeff Parker in his west Huntsville home in 2018. A judge released the footage, over objections from the city, after a Madison County jury found Darby guilty of murder in 2021. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Darby’s conviction and ordered a new trial, which is scheduled for December.

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Just before the rally began in Huntsville on Friday evening, police took one of the protesters, Garrick Rex Rawls, 37, into custody. He got out of jail on bond just before midnight.

“We went out to the protest and I got arrested,” Rawls told AL.com after coming out of the jail. “There were four officers waiting for me. I got arrested on my way to the protest as I got to the park, they stopped me and asked me for my name, I gave it to them, they already knew who I was, they stopped me, arrested me they told me I had a warrant so they just took me from there.”

He said it was because he missed a court date following an arrest at another protest earlier this year when he was away in Chicago. He was arrested in Chicago for participating in another protest there, he said.

The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency is investigating Arnold’s death. At the same time, Huntsville police spokeswoman Sydney Martin said Friday that the district attorney’s office agreed the officer could return to duty following a preliminary review of the case. They did not release the name of the officer.

Huntsville police shot Arnold just over a week ago near the 500 Block of Monroe Street in downtown. In a news release, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said Arnold “was in possession of a handgun.”