Chief Bobby Dodd, third from left, speaks with police officers near the scene of an officer-involved shooting just after midnight Friday morning, April 13, 2012. Police raided an illegal gambling operation just off Gunbarrel Road around midnight. Most of the participants were given citations, but one was wounded after producing a weapon.Chattanooga police showed video footage from a police-involved shooting of an armed suspect last week to correct any misgivings circulating in the community that could fuel racial tensions, said Police Chief Bobby Dodd.
“When you have as much gang activity we have going on, we have some gun violence and things going on, with the Bessie Smith Strut — the issue of that coming up. Summer is coming up. I don’t want this information getting out to the public to fester the next six months to a year before the truth’s actually put out,” Dodd said Wednesday.
Clifford Billups, 32, a black man and the owner of Herman’s Soul Food on Brainerd Road, was shot April 4 when police raided a high-stakes poker operation in an office on Gunbarrel Road. A white police officer shot Billups, after he pointed a handgun at police, the video shows.
On Wednesday at the police department, Dodd noted that, in the days after the raid, reports were circulating that Billups was only catering the game and, when police burst in, he believed it was a robbery and fled out the back, where he was shot.
Billups’ attorney also said his client was shot in the back. The wound was not life-threatening.