Police shooting recalls previous tensions in Montgomery

Empty shell casings were on the ground, fired by what city officials say was a young police officer working an overnight shift.

McDermott called the arrest a "political witch hunt" meant to "quell public unrest" and said fellow officers from across Alabama helped fund Smith's $150,000 bail.

Mayor Todd Strange said Montgomery values its law enforcement officers but has changed in the decades since it seemed like a hotbed of police violence.

Hinson's wood-frame home, where Gunn was shot to death, is just yards from the small brick house where Gunn lived with his mother.

Gunn's death comes amid a national conversation about law enforcement's use of guns and other legal methods.

Yet the quick move to charge a white officer with murder in the shooting of a black man stood in contrast to past episodes of police violence dating back decades in Montgomery.

In 1983, with memories of Whitehurst's killing still fresh, months of unrest followed a confrontation in which two plainclothes police officers burst into a home full of funeral mourners believing something suspicious was going on.