Murder charge for US cop after video appears to show him shooting black man

[JohnnyCage]

Murder charge for US cop after video appears to show him shooting black man in the back

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 08 April, 2015, 10:35am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 08 April, 2015, 3:47pm

Reuters and AP in Charleston

Walter Lamer Scott (right) runs away as City Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager fires several shots at him in North Charleston, South Carolina, in stills from a bystander's video.

A white US police officer was charged with murder yesterday, hours after law enforcement officials viewed a dramatic video that appeared to show him shooting at a fleeing black man eight times.

Authorities said the victim, 50-year-old Walter Lamer Scott, was shot after the officer, City Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager, had already hit him with a stun gun.

The incident began when Scott was pulled over by the policeman over a traffic infraction – a broken brake light – on Saturday in North Charleston city.

A video of the shooting shows a brief scuffle between Slager and Scott before the latter begins running away.

Then the officer fires several times at Scott’s back, and after the eighth shot, Scott then falls facedown onto the grass. The officer is then filmed slowly walking towards him, and placing Scott in handcuffs.

While talking on his radio, the officer then walks several paces back to where he opened fire, before returning to Scott and appearing to drop an object next to him on the ground, the video shows.

A police incident report said Slager, 33, who joined the department in 2009, told other officers that Scott had taken his stun gun. In the video, Scott does not appear to be armed while fleeing.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey announced the murder charge at a hastily called news conference in which he said Slager made “a bad decision”.

“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Summey said. “When you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield or a citizen on the street, you have to live with that decision.”

WARNING: Disturbing images. Bystander's footage of the North Charleston shooting.


The Federal Bureau of Investigation and US Justice Department have begun a separate investigation.

The shooting comes as Americans grapple with issues of trust between law enforcement and minority communities after a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. They include the deaths of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York.

Both incidents sparked furious protests across America. However, a grand jury declined to indict Ferguson officer Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Brown last August.

North Charleston Police said Slager was arrested by officers of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.

At the news conference, North Charleston Police Chief Eddie Driggers confirmed that Scott was shot as he was running away from the officer.

“I have been around this police department a long time and all the officers on this force, the men and women, are like my children,” he told reporters, his voice cracking with emotion. “So you tell me how a father would react seeing his child do something? I’ll let you answer that yourself.”

A woman who answered the phone at Scott’s residence identified herself as the victim’s niece but did not give her name. When told about the murder charge, she said, “That’s great. That’s great.” Then she hung up.

Chris Stewart, an attorney for Scott’s family, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

City Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager has been charged with murder. Before the video was released, Slager told police that the suspect had taken his stun gun. Photo: Reuters

Slager’s own attorney, David Aylor, dropped him as a client on Tuesday, a day after he had released a statement saying the officer felt threatened and that Scott was trying to grab the officer’s stun gun.

“This is a terrible tragedy that has impacted our community,” said Aylor.

Social media sites such as Twitter were a frenzy of reaction, mostly by people commenting that without the video, no action might have been taken against the police officer.

“I guarantee if there was no video, the evidence would have automatically matched cops’ versions,” one person tweeted.

Added another: “Imagine how many times throughout history they got away with murder because there wasn’t a camera.”

North Charleston, the state’s third-largest city, is a community of about 100,000 residents, nearly half of whom are black, according to 2010 US Census data. It is far more diverse than South Carolina at large, where blacks made up just 28 per cent of the 2010 population.

For years, North Charleston battled back from an economic slump caused by the closing of the Charleston Naval Base on the city’s waterfront in the mid-1990s.

But now the city has bounced back in a big way, due largely in part to the huge investment by Boeing, which has a 787 aircraft manufacturing plant in the city and employs about 7,500 people in South Carolina, most of them in North Charleston.

 

[JohnnyCage]

Blacks blame shooting on police indifference to complaints

By JEFFREY S. COLLINS and MICHAEL BIESECKER
Apr. 9, 2015 5:48 PM EDT

Jeffrey Spell, of Charleston, S.C., places flowers at the scene where Walter Scott was killed by a North Charleston police officer Saturday, after a traffic stop in North Charleston, S.C., Thursday, April 9, 2015. "I\'ve worked in North Charleston for many years and I\'m troubled by the whole thing. I thought it would be respectable," said Spell about why he brought the flowers. "Nationwide, the cops are killing people. There has to be other ways of making arrests," Spell said. The officer, Michael Thomas Slager, has been fired and charged with murder. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The fatal shooting of an unarmed black man fleeing from a police officer has stirred outrage around the nation, but people in this South Carolina city aren't surprised, calling it inevitable in a police department they believe focuses on petty crimes and fails to keep its officers in check.

There is almost nothing in Michael Thomas Slager's police personnel file to suggest that his bosses considered him a rogue officer capable of murdering a man he just pulled over for a broken tail light. People in the community he served say this reflects what's going wrong with policing today: Officers nearly always get the last word when citizens complain.

"We've had through the years numerous similar complaints, and they all seem to be taken lightly and dismissed without any obvious investigation," the Rev. Joseph Darby, vice president of the Charleston branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Thursday.

The mostly black neighborhood in North Charleston where Slager fired eight shots at the back of Walter Lamer Scott on Saturday is far from unique in this regard, said Melvin Tucker, a former FBI agent and police chief in four southern cities who often testifies in police misconduct cases.

Nationwide, training that pushes pre-emptive action, military experience that creates a warzone mindset, and legal system favoring police in misconduct cases all lead to scenarios where officers to see the people they serve as enemies, he said.

"It's not just training. It's not just unreasonable fear. It's not just the warrior mentality. It's not just court decisions that almost encourage the use of it. It is not just race," Tucker said. "It is all of that."

Both Slager, 33, and Scott, 55, were U.S. Coast Guard veteran. Slager had the dismissed excessive force complaint and Scott had been jailed repeatedly for failing to pay child support, but neither man had a record of violence. Slager consistently earned positive reviews in his five years with the North Charleston Police.

Slager's new attorney, Andy Savage, said Thursday that he's conducting his own investigation, and that it's "far too early for us to be saying what we think." Slager's first attorney said he followed all proper procedures before using deadly force, but swiftly dropped him after the dead man's family released a bystander's video of the shooting.

The officer, whose wife is eight months pregnant, is being held without bond pending an Aug. 21 hearing on a charge of murder that could put him in prison for 30 years to life if convicted.

As a steady crowd left flowers, stuffed animals, notes and protest signs Thursday in the empty lot where Scott was gunned down, many said police in South Carolina's third-largest city routinely dismiss complaints of petty brutality and harassment, even when eyewitnesses can attest to police misbehavior. The result, they say, is that officers are regarded with a mixture of distrust and fear.

Slager's file includes a single excessive use-of-force complaint, from 2013: A man said Slager used his stun gun against him without reason. But Slager was exonerated and the case closed, even though witnesses told The Associated Press that investigators never followed up with them.

"It's almost impossible to get an agency to do an impartial internal affairs investigation. First of all the investigators doing it are co-workers of the person being investigated. Number two, there's always the tendency on the part of the departments to believe the officers," Tucker said.

Mario Givens, the man who accused Slager of excessive force in 2013, told the AP that Slager woke him before dawn by loudly banging on his front door, and saying "Come outside or I'll tase you!"

"I didn't want that to happen to me, so I raised my arms over my head, and when I did, he tased me in my stomach anyway," Givens said. "They never told me how they reached the conclusion. Never. They never contacted anyone from that night. No one from the neighborhood."

Givens said he's convinced Scott's death could have been prevented if Slager had been disciplined in his case.

"If they had just listened to me and investigated what happened that night, this man might be alive today," he said.

Darby also wonders if Saturday's fatal shooting might have turned out differently had the department thoroughly investigated the 2013 Taser complaint.

"I think he would have been rebuked instead of fired," Darby said. "But maybe it changes the way he sees things."

Darby and other civil rights leaders want North Charleston to create an independent citizens review board to review complaints against police, since "law enforcement is going to almost always give itself the benefit of the doubt."

Such boards are few and far between in South Carolina.

North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said Wednesday that the department now plans to review Givens' complaint, although he wouldn't say what difference that could make now.

___

Biesecker reported from Raleigh, North Carolina. Associated Press writer Mitch Weiss in North Charleston, South Carolina, contributed to this report.