A Black male encounters a police officer, shots are fired and tragically the civilian dies.

The death is followed by demands for a thorough investigation. We won't add the usual outcome: police officer is freed. That may come later.

We may be getting ahead of the story, but suffice it to say that in the case of Shem Walker, a Caribbean immigrant, who was shot and killed, allegedly by an under-cover cop in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, a thorough inquiry is needed to determine what happened last Saturday when the Guyanese, a United States Army veteran was killed on the steps of his ailing mother's brownstone home on Lafayette Avenue.

Brooklyn District Attorney, Charles Hynes must carry out a no-holds barred investigation into why Walker was shot in the head and chest. We think Hynes owes it to the public; the dead man's mother, Lydia Walker; his sister, Jean Nurse; and to the people of this city to inform us why the 49 year old man, known in the neighborhood as an unrelenting anti-drug campaigner, was gunned down by a plainclothes police officer who supposedly was monitoring a drug buy.

New York Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries, who represents the Fort Greene neighborhood in the New York State Assembly in Albany, Letitia James, the City Council member for the area, the Rev. Al Sharpton, and the Caribbean Guyana Institute for Democracy led by Rickford Burke were absolutely correct in their demands for an extensive investigation into what at first glance appears to be an unjustifiable killing. Some have even gone so far as to call it "murder."

According to published reports and statements made by the CGID and the dead man's sister, Walker had gone to his mother's residence for dinner. When he was finished, he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette, where he reportedly encountered a man in civilian clothes with a pair of headphones who was sitting on the stairs.

Walker demanded that the person on the steps move on. When he refused to do so, a struggle ensued and the men fell to the ground. The preliminary evidence shows that the person with the headphones then pulled out a gun and shot Walker. Walker was rushed to the nearby Brooklyn Hospital Center where he was pronounced dead.

It now appears that the shooter was a police officer who was supposedly monitoring a drug deal. As Walker's sister explained, she heard gunshots, rushed to the window, and saw her brother lying, bleeding on the ground. It was while the life was oozing out of her brother that she witnessed the alleged shooter' showing a uniformed police officer what appeared to be a badge and other forms of police identification. He is said to have been allowed to walk away from the scene and to disappear, without the Police Department disclosing his name, rank, number and any of the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting.

The tragedy is the latest in a series of questionable deadly police shootings of Black men in the New York City and in the country, underscoring the frightening possibility of death at the hands of a cop.

Born in what was then British Guyana on March 18, 1960, roughly six years before his birthplace was given its independence from Britain and changed its name to Guyana, Walker grew up on East Bank Demerara, coming to the United States at an early age. He later enlisted in the U.S. Army and served for 15 years. What's particularly disturbing was that days after the killing, the Police Department had still failed to disclose anything about the case and the officer who pulled the trigger, sending a signal that: (a) the death was uncalled for; (b) the blue wall of silence was impeding full disclosure of the truth; or (c) the NYPD has something to hide.

This tendency by cops to shoot first and ask questions later must be stopped. Several weeks ago, a Black officer in civilian clothes was gunned down by another officer, also in strange circumstances. Then, there was the infamous Sean Bell case. The young man was murdered by under-cover officers less than 24 hours before he was due to marry his girlfriend, the mother of his children in Queens. The officers involved in that case were subsequently charged but exonerated by a single judge who heard the case without a jury.

We are withholding judgment until we hear the outcome of the investigation. It isn't that we doubt what witnesses have told the news media. We want to hear the unvarnished truth because the tragedy smells to the high heaven. The Brooklyn DA must demonstrate impartiality and aggressiveness in his investigation, even if it means bringing a police officer to the bar of justice for killing a man who wanted nothing more man to look after his mother.