AP Sources: No federal charges for Baton Rouge officers

(AP) — The Justice Department's decision not to charge two white Baton Rouge police officers in the shooting death of a black man may not be the final legal chapter in a case that reverberated far beyond Louisiana's capital.

The department's decision doesn't preclude state authorities from conducting their own investigation of Alton Sterling's fatal shooting last summer and pursuing their own criminal charges in the case.

Dozens of people gathered Tuesday evening outside the Baton Rouge convenience store where Sterling was shot and killed during a struggle with the two officers on July 5, 2016.

Racial tensions in Baton Rouge were simmering when a black military veteran from Missouri ambushed and killed three Baton Rouge law enforcement officers and wounded three others before being shot dead on July 17.

A district attorney's recusal left Landry to decide whether to have his own office review evidence for possible state charges or to appoint another district attorney to the case.

Bamberg also represents relatives of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man who was running from a traffic stop in Charleston, South Carolina, when a white police officer shot and killed him in 2015.

The former officer, 35-year-old Michael Slager, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges Tuesday, five months after a jury deadlocked on state murder charges against him.

Tuesday's decision in the Sterling case was the highest profile decision not to bring charges against police officers in a deadly shooting since Jeff Sessions became attorney general.

[...] he also believes too much federal scrutiny of police departments can diminish officers' effectiveness and hurt morale, and has ordered a sweeping review of federal consent decrees that force cities to agree to major policing overhauls.