Title: Cop Charged With Murdering Black Charlestonian Source:
charleston post and courier URL Source:http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150407/PC16/150409468 Published:Apr 7, 2015 Author:Andrew Knapp Post Date:2015-04-07 19:52:57 by TEA Party Reveler Keywords:cop pig thug, son of Gatlin, son of GrandIsland Views:15199 Comments:66
A Charleston cop has been arrested on murder charges after video shows him shooting a black man in the back 8 times as he ran away.
"I haven't seen the video, but I've heard the officers conduct was 110% illegal and despicable."
The video is a waste of time -- it begins as the officer is shooting. As they all do.
In South Carolina, "more than 200 police officers fired their weapons at suspects in the past five years, and none have been convicted, according to an analysis by the State newspaper's Clif LeBlanc".
This officer was charged a year after the shooting as a result of pressure from the black community. I'm sure Ferguson and other recent shootings played a role.
South Carolina allows deadly force on a fleeing felon. Whether the prosecutor can get 12 people to agree it wasn't applicable here remains to be seen.
"It ends with him dropping his taser next to the body from what I hear... that's undefendable"
It was odd, that's for sure.
If there was a struggle for the taser, it fell to the ground, the guy ran away ..., how does the cop explain the taser next to the body? Hell, that's more incriminating than leaving it where it was.
I'm guessing that, after the shooting, he just wasn't thinking straight.
As the black guy starts to run, you can see a metallic line tightening between him and the cop. So a taser attempt was made.
I conclude the cop tried to taser him but that the electrode barb hit some loose clothing and never contacted the skin firmly so the suspect turned to flee and got shot 8 times in the back.
FNC said the video showed the cop retreated back to the vehicles to get the dropped taser. I'm not sure about that.
And they aren't explaining how they got so far away from the two vehicles.
What if the black guy was driving drunk and had a couple of previous DUIs (possibly including a fatal accident)? What if he was running away because he knew he'd face prison time if he was tested for DUI and got convicted? What if he was a truck driver or other license holder and he was running to avoid the breathalyzer and losing his job?
None of that excuses shooting a non-violent detainee in the back but it might mitigate the officer's guilt, despite his manipulation of the crime scene.
If the cop's meddling with the scene shows evidence of guilt, doesn't the black guy fleeing show some evidence of guilt as well?
News reports are fine but a few seconds of video never tells the whole story.
Anyway, I thought it would be fun to let you two play the "hang the dirty cop" role and I'd lick some raw jackboot for a change. : )
"And they aren't explaining how they got so far away from the two vehicles."
My understanding was that there was a car chase. The victim bailed and the cop chased him. There was a struggle and the taser was employed -- ineffectively. A further struggle and the taser fell to the ground.
Now the video starts.
The guy flees again and the cop fires seven shots. Pause. The guy keeps running. All misses? The cop fires the 8th round and he finally falls.
The cop handcuffs him then retreats back to the location of the struggle to get the dropped taser. Why? I have no idea.
The guy keeps running. All misses? The cop fires the 8th round and he finally falls.
It was really lousy shooting. The black guy was too chubby and out of condition to run faster than a speedwalker. He might have collapsed from exhaustion after another 10 steps.
Missing seven times raises some question of whether the cop was endangering the public or property by firing so many shots ineffectively. It was pretty short range against a fleeing (not charging) suspect, a pretty easy shot even by my standards. If he couldn't shoot then, how effective could he be against a competent and aggressive thug?
Maybe we'll find this arises from a lack of competence all around by this cop. Nothing here indicates his competence in judgement or taser use or pistol use at a range of under 30' against a pudgy suspect fleeing in a straight line in slow motion.
Maybe less competent cops do tend to get in more trouble with excessive force. You hear this often about women cops who are considered to shoot people and dogs quicker than male cops do because the women are less physically capable and experienced to mix it up a bit hand-to-hand.
"Maybe we'll find this arises from a lack of competence all around by this cop. Nothing here indicates his competence in judgement or taser use or pistol use at a range of under 30' against a pudgy suspect fleeing in a straight line in slow motion."
Look no further than Darren Wilson who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson. Here we have a giant running straight at the cop who fires ten shots and connects with only half of them -- two in the right arm, one in the upper right chest, and two in the head (by then he was only 10 feet away).
Yesterday, when I wrote about a police shooting in the northeast corner of Illinois, I received some of the same questions which always come up after the cops kill a suspect. Why, some readers ask, must you always defend the police? Why don’t you talk about the bad cops who act maliciously? In general, the answer has been that there are so many good cops and so few bad ones that they tend to merit the benefit of the doubt. But in nearly every one of these situations I have included the caveat that police forces are composed of fallible human beings and there are some bad ones out there. Unfortunately, we seem to have found one of them in South Carolina.
In the city of North Charleston there was an incident on Saturday in which a police officer shot a suspect in the back, claiming afterward that he “felt threatened” by Walter Scott. But a bystander with a cell phone camera captured the entire event and the officer has been arrested on murder charges after the video told a very different story.
A white North Charleston police officer was arrested on a murder charge after a video surfaced Tuesday of the lawman shooting eight times at a 50-year-old black man as the man ran away.
Walter L. Scott, a Coast Guard veteran and father of four, died Saturday after Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, 33, shot him in the back.
Five of the eight bullets hit Scott, his family’s attorney said. Four of those struck his back. One hit an ear.
The footage filmed by a bystander, which The Post and Courier obtained Tuesday from a source who asked to remain anonymous, shows the end of the confrontation between the two on Saturday after Scott ran from a traffic stop. It was the first piece of evidence contradicting an account Slager gave earlier this week through his attorney.
I won’t embed it here due to the graphic content, but the video is available at the link above. (Warning: Disturbing content which pretty clearly shows a murder taking place.) Officer Slager claimed initially that Scott had wrested his taser from him and was shot during the ensuing struggle, but the video tells a very different story. Scott was “fleeing” the officer, but very slowly with taser wires trailing from his body. He was between ten and twenty feet away when Slager unloaded his service weapon into him. Even more damning is the video footage showing the officer returning to where the struggle took place, picking something up (presumably the taser) and taking it over and dropping it next to Scott’s motionless and now handcuffed body. Finally, he reported that officers on the scene had tried every measure to resuscitate Walter Scott until paramedics arrived, but the video shows that they did little more than check for a pulse at one point. This paints a picture of not only an unjustifiable shooting, but what looks very much like an attempted coverup and falsifying official reports.
To compound matters, unlike the shooting in Illinois, this wasn’t some young guy speeding away into the community with an illegal handgun he had just purchased. It was a slow moving, fifty year old guy with a busted taillight and a bench warrant for some unpaid child support. I can’t picture a scenario where you justify unloading on this man.
To repeat, we do unfortunately have rare instances of bad cops out there who are uncovered from time to time. Officer Slager will get his day in court on very serious charges, but there seems to be little doubt that he falls into that category. As I’ve said ever since the Ferguson incident, there is a growing body of evidence which leads me to believe that having cameras on all police activities is probably a good idea. (For the record, North Charleston had funds approved this winter for body cameras for their police, but they’ve not been implemented yet.) In the majority of cases, such as the Michael Brown shooting, the cameras will probably indicate that good officers acted correctly. But in the rare case of a bad cop going outside the boundaries of the law – as we appear to have here – then those situations can be resolved as well.
Unfortunately, this incident will be run up the flagpole to build on the narrative that there are armies of racist, evil cops out there. It’s equally sad that essentially all of the media coverage – including the article linked above – still has to begin with “a white officer” and “a black suspect” since this would be an equally tragic story regardless of the race of the actors involved. That can’t be avoided, but the best thing that South Carolina can do at this point is to ensure that Officer Slager has a speedy, fair trial and, if found guilty, is punished appropriately. That’s the only thing that will maintain the credibility of the police and keep the system on track.
See the 3 minute video at the link. It starts just before the shooting begins but you'll see the second cop arrive and the shooter cop leave the body and come back to it.
Apparently, the cop is a better shot than we thought. Hit his target in the back four times, once in the ear, 3 more shots missed (to endanger the public).
Usually t his would be breaking news on Freeperland but they avoided the subject for a long time - a bad sign for the cop if freepers won't knee jerk support him shooting a black perp.
Usually t his would be breaking news on Freeperland but they avoided the subject for a long time - a bad sign for the cop if freepers won't knee jerk support him shooting a black perp.
One look at the vid and you know that isn't what anyone wants in law enforcement.
Usually t his would be breaking news on Freeperland but they avoided the subject for a long time - a bad sign for the cop if freepers won't knee jerk support him shooting a black perp.
One look at the vid and you know that isn't what anyone wants in law enforcement.
It is more of a prison camp guard shooting down an escaping POW feel to it.
