Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say the encounter that ended with an officer killing Curtis Massey started with what officers believed was a “criminal transaction.”

A man who was standing there says it was a quarter.

According to an account provided to The Hive Wire, Massey was talking with his friend Eric and another person near the Shell station at LaSalle Street and Newland Road on Friday afternoon. Massey asked Eric for change to buy something to drink. Eric reached into his pocket, pulled out some coins, and handed them to him.

Massey turned toward the store.

Officers standing nearby called out. According to Eric’s account, Massey didn’t initially realize they were talking to him. Once he understood that the officers were coming toward him, he ran.

A short time later, a CMPD officer shot him.

His family knew him as Curt-T. They describe him as a husband, a son, a cousin, a nephew, and a father to three young boys. Since his death, his relatives, friends, and neighbors have gathered near the place where he was killed to mourn him and push back against the police version of what happened.

That matters because CMPD’s version barely has a person in it.

It has a suspected transaction, a man who ran, a gun, and an officer who felt threatened. It’s a sequence designed to make the shooting feel inevitable. By the time the officer fires, the department has already walked us through all the reasons we’re supposed to think Massey brought this on himself.

But if the witness account is true, police didn’t interrupt a criminal transaction. They saw one Black man hand another Black man some change and decided they were looking at a crime.

That isn’t a small detail. That’s the whole reason the encounter happened.

How a Quarter Becomes Probable Cause

CMPD hasn’t explained what its officers actually saw.

Did they see the coins? Did they think Eric handed Massey drugs? Did they hear any part of the conversation? Did they recognize anyone standing there? What, specifically, made the exchange look criminal?

We don’t know. CMPD’s statement simply says officers saw what they “believed” was a criminal transaction.

And that word—believed—is useful. It moves the focus away from what was happening and onto what police thought was happening. Once the officers’ suspicion is accepted as reasonable, everything Massey did afterward can be used to prove they were right.

He didn’t immediately stop. Then he ran.

Police and news reports often treat running as a confession with sneakers on. But people run from police for all kinds of reasons, including the fairly obvious reason that encounters with police can go very badly.

In this case, it did.

Massey’s decision to run doesn’t tell us what happened before officers approached him. It doesn’t retroactively transform a quarter into contraband. And it doesn’t make every decision police made after that point reasonable.

But this is how suspicion works when the person doing the suspecting has a badge and a gun. Police decide something looks criminal. Your response to being treated like a criminal becomes the proof that they were right. The encounter escalates. Then the escalation is blamed on you.

Police saw a transaction. Massey ran. Police chased him. A gun became visible. An officer fired.

At every step, the police response becomes the justification for the next police response.

Then the person at the center of it is dead and can’t tell us what he thought was happening.

About That Gun

CMPD says Massey “produced” a firearm while running and that an officer perceived an “imminent deadly threat.”

“Produced” is carrying a lot of weight here.

CMPD hasn’t said Massey pointed the gun. It hasn’t said he fired it. It hasn’t clearly said he was holding it. The department has given us a word vague enough to sound threatening without describing the actual threat.

Witnesses have offered a very different account.

Shannon Haines, identified by WCCB as a witness, said Massey never touched the gun in his waistband. Haines said Massey tripped while running and that the officer who killed him was the only one of three officers there who drew a weapon.

The account provided to The Hive Wire says the gun fell from Massey’s clothing when he stumbled. According to that account, Massey didn’t pick it up or reach for it. He stood back up and kept running.

Then the officer fired.

Those accounts differ on where the gun was. That needs to be resolved. But both challenge the central impression CMPD’s statement creates: that Massey did something with the weapon that forced the officer to shoot him.

Here’s the thing: The presence of a gun isn’t the end of the conversation.

Whether Massey was legally allowed to carry it matters if we’re discussing what police could’ve arrested or charged him for. It doesn’t automatically tell us whether he threatened anyone.

If the gun was illegal, police could’ve arrested him. Prosecutors could’ve charged him. A judge could’ve sentenced him.

Illegal gun possession isn’t punishable by execution.

And breaking a law doesn’t make a person disposable. Accountability is supposed to require the truth about what someone did and a consequence proportionate to it. A bullet skips all of that.

Whose Fear Counts?

Police shootings are almost always explained through the officer’s fear.

The officer saw a movement. The officer perceived a threat. The officer had to make a split-second decision.

We rarely spend the same amount of time asking what the person being chased might’ve feared.

We don’t know why Massey ran because police killed the only person who could fully answer that question. But we do know that Black people in Charlotte don’t encounter police in some historical vacuum where everyone can reasonably expect the same treatment.

Running from police is dangerous. Staying isn’t a guarantee of safety either. Moving too quickly can be called aggression. Moving too slowly can be called noncompliance. Reaching for something can get you shot. Failing to immediately follow a command can also get you shot.

Police get to experience fear as a reason to use force. The people they approach are expected to experience fear as a reason to become perfectly calm and perfectly obedient.

One person’s fear is treated as human. The other person’s fear is treated as evidence.

Whatever Massey felt in those final moments has now been replaced by CMPD’s description of what the officer felt. His family is left to live with the consequences.

Charlotte Has Done This Before

Massey was killed two days before the tenth anniversary of CMPD’s killing of Keith Lamont Scott.

On September 20, 2016, officers went to Scott’s apartment complex looking for someone else. They said they noticed Scott with marijuana and a gun. Police ordered him to drop the weapon and shot him after deciding he posed an imminent threat.

Scott’s family disputed that account. His wife, Rakeyia Scott, recorded the encounter while telling officers that her husband had a traumatic brain injury and begging them not to shoot him.

When police video was eventually released, it showed Scott getting out of his vehicle and moving backward with his hands at his sides. The video didn’t clearly show him pointing a gun at anyone.

Scott’s killing and Massey’s killing aren’t identical. But come on. The structure is familiar.

Police are somewhere for an unrelated reason. They notice a Black man who wasn’t the person they came for. They interpret what he’s doing as criminal. A gun becomes the center of the story. Officers issue commands. The man is killed. CMPD explains the killing through the danger its officers say they perceived.

Then we spend all our time discussing whether the dead man complied correctly and almost none asking why police decided to confront him in the first place.

Ten years after Scott’s death brought Charlotte into the streets, we’re doing it again.

Massey didn’t call police to that bus stop. He didn’t decide an exchange between friends looked like a drug deal. He didn’t introduce armed authority into the situation.

Police did.

If remembering Keith Lamont Scott means anything, it has to mean more than saying his name every September. Charlotte can’t claim it learned from his death while continuing to accept the same basic story every time police kill someone.

Curt-T

The account provided to The Hive Wire also says Massey remained in the roadway after he was shot, that officers removed his clothing, and that medics didn’t arrive promptly. Those claims still need to be matched against dispatch records and an actual emergency-response timeline.

But we don’t need another investigation to understand what’s already happened to Massey in the public telling of his death.

CMPD gave Charlotte an unnamed man, a suspicious exchange, a foot chase, and a gun.

His family gave us Curtis Massey.

Curt-T.

A husband. A son. A father whose three boys now have to grow up without him.

Police power doesn’t begin when an officer fires. It starts earlier, when officers get to decide who looks suspicious, which ordinary interactions resemble crimes, and whose fear makes them dangerous.

It continues afterward, when the department gets to describe the person its officer killed.

CMPD says this started with a criminal transaction.

A witness says it started with a quarter for a drink.

That’s the difference between seeing a crime and seeing a person.

Police saw what they believed.

Curt-T’s family is asking Charlotte to see who they killed.