US cop shoots dead man with raised hands

Another police killing is stirring anger in a US city, this time in New Jersey, where a tense traffic stop captured on video ended with a passenger shot to death as he stepped out of a car with his hands raised at shoulder height.

The newly released footage from a police dashboard camera shows police in a December 30 stop that escalates quickly after one officer warns his partner about seeing a gun in the glove compartment of the Jaguar.

Bridgeton officer Braheme Days screams over and over at the passenger, Jerame Reid, "Show me your hands!" and "If you reach for something, you're going to be f***ing dead!".

The officer appears to reach into the car and remove the gun.

But the brief standoff ends with Reid disregarding Days' order not to move, stepping out and getting shot.

The shooting has touched off protests in Bridgeton, a struggling city of about 25,000 people - two-thirds of them black or Hispanic - outside Philadelphia.

The case came after months of turbulent demonstrations and violence over the killings of unarmed black men by white police officers in New York and Ferguson, Missouri.

Eric Garner's death in New York was captured on video, while Michael Brown's in Ferguson was not.

Days is black, his partner white.

The passenger was black, as was the driver.

Both officers have been placed on leave while the Cumberland County prosecutor's office investigates.

Activists are calling on the prosecutor to transfer the case to the state attorney-general.

"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, chair and founder of the civil rights group the National Awareness Alliance.

Reid, 36, had spent about 13 years in prison for shooting at New Jersey State Police troopers when he was a teenager.

He was also arrested last year on charges including drug possession and obstruction; Days was one of the arresting officers then.