Video shows US cops shooting black man

Video footage showing US police killing another black man has once again raised tensions between law enforcers and the country's African-American community.

Jerame Reid, 36, was killed on December 30 after he and a friend, travelling in a Jaguar, were pulled over at a roadblock in New Jersey.

The encounter between Reid and Braheme Days, a black police officer at the Bridgeton police department, began cordially.

But it turned tense after Days apparently spotted a handgun in the Jaguar's glove compartment.

Days is seen pulling out his weapon and telling Reid: "If you reach for something, you're going to be f... dead."

Reid insists he is not reaching for anything and then appears to try to push his way out of the car with his hands raised.

Days opens fire and his white partner, Roger Worley, also fires at least one shot. Reid, a father of one who previously spent 13 years in prison for shooting at police, died on the scene.

The video footage, shot on the dashboard camera of the officers' car, was released through an open records request to the South Jersey Times and the Press of Atlantic City.

"The video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person," said Walter Hudson, chairman and founder of the civil rights group National Awareness Alliance.

"He complied with the officer and the officer shot him," he said.

Both officers have been placed on leave while the local prosecutor's office investigates the case. Activists say local prosecutors are too close to the police and rarely pursue criminal charges against officers who kill black men.

President Barack Obama has tried to bridge the gap between police and black communities with a series of regional discussion forums.

In his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, he said: "We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York. But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can't walk home without being harassed. And surely we can understand the wife who won't rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end of his shift."