‘There’s room for protests and room to sit at the table’ community reacts to Christopher Jordan shooting

The decision by the State Attorney’s office to not charge the Fort Myers Police detective who fired the fatal shot that killed Christopher Jordan on December 1, has now sparked two different responses.

On one side the NAACP said they plan on protesting the decision and doing what they can to get the SA office to overturn the decision.

“We’re looking to see can we appeal her decision, it’s the wrong decision. We will also be going before the FBI, because they’re supposed to be investigating this. But he had no gun. He was unarmed,” James Muwakkil, the president of the Lee County branch of the NAACP said. “No one is above the law. You cannot take the law and make it and twist it. Like you want it, to justify wrongdoing. Just because you have the power to do so. She abused her power. She misused her power How can we trust that? We can’t.”

On the other side, Fort Myers City Councilman Johnny Streets, who oversees the district where the shooting happened, has a different opinion on how things should be handled.

“The fact that the state attorney’s has made a decision, I don’t see any way that this decision can be overturned. But in the interim, we need to be moving forward as to explaining to what really happened here. Now that it’s decisive and it’s done,” Streets said. “We don’t need to be fighting each other. I always like to say, instead of turning on each other, we need to turn to each other. Because our youth are watching, everybody’s watching. So I just hope that we can move forward.”

Chantel Rhodes is a community activist and was one of the first people to sit in the room with Fort Myers Police Chief Fields following the fatal shooting. Rhodes said there is room for both perspectives to be included, it doesn’t have to be one versus another.

“We need all hands on deck, there is room for protest, there is room for people to sit down at the table of discussion. We can respond to this matter and so many other matters of injustice. With a multi-focused approach, we can focus on resolving matters, sitting down with police officers, chiefs, leaders, having them come together with the community to discuss these matters. How do we prevent this from happening again? We can also say, you know what this was mishandled, we’re going to take it to another level, now we’re going to go above this jurisdiction.” Rhodes said.

• RELATED: Detective returns to work after Christopher Jordan investigation

The NAACP has a protest scheduled for Thursday. They said the goal is to inform the public about the shooting and to gather support in their fight to overturn the State Attorney’s decision.