Solidarity, not skepticism: Patrolman Slager's supervisor comforts the killer as the victim's life ebbs away.As many have said, were it not for the video, Michael Thomas Slager would have been quickly exonerated and, most likely, received a commendation for the killing of Walter Scott. The most remarkable aspect of that video, however, is not the unbearable spectacle of the shooting itself, but rather the composed, almost clinical way that Slager executes the victim, and the ease with which he makes the transition from the killing to the cover-up.
Slagers body language while drawing and firing his gun suggested annoyance, rather than urgency. He never bothered to render aid to Scott, choosing instead to handcuff the dying man fortifying the pretense that the unarmed man who had fled in terror had been a threat to him. Although Slager had sauntered over to examine and truss his victim, he sprinted well, waddled vigorously back to the scene of the previous altercation. He retrieved his Taser and then deposited it next to Scotts bullet-ridden body.
In doing so, Slager tampered with evidence in a crime scene. The patrolman did this casually, in full view of a second police officer, acting in the serene confidence that he would not be required to explain or justify his actions beyond recitation of the familiar formula: He resisted arrest, he made an aggressive move for my Taser, I feared for my safety and had no choice but to use lethal force.
The same result would have been achieved in the murder of Walter Scott were it not for the presence of a young man equipped with a cellphone and armed with exceptional courage and presence of mind. That complication is the only reason why this incident deviated from the long-established script.
If not for the video, this shooting -- like all other officer-involved shootings would never have been investigated as a potential criminal homicide, but rather as an assault on law enforcement. From that perspective, Scott was identified as the suspect, and Slager as the victim.
| Chief Driggers (r) with Mayor Summey. |
The groups Chaplaincy Log is replete with mentions of ministerial visits and counseling sessions with first responders, local police, FBI agents, the Coast Guard, and other members of the States enforcement caste. There is the occasional mention of a pastoral visit to a civilian in need of comfort, but they are very much the exception. The ministry is overwhelmingly devoted to the needs of the States emissaries of official violence, rather than addressing the concerns of the public supposedly served by them.
Listen up, blacks, whites, Latinos, and everybody else. Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air
. Its as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is wrong YOU OBEY. Parents, teach your children to respect and obey those in authority.
Instant, unqualified obedience to police is necessary, Franklin insists, because The Bible says to submit to your leaders and those in authority `because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account.
Franklin has elsewhere declaimed against Islamic law as if he were an expert. The deficiency he displays in expounding Romans 13 should govern assessments of his competence in interpreting scriptures from other religious traditions.
While theres no way to know if Slager who, like his victim, had served in the Coast Guard -- had been catechized in that view of Romans 13, he clearly acted on the same assumptions regarding authority and the propriety of summary execution as punishment for Mundanes who do not render the required tribute of immediate submission. The same assumptions were evinced by the studied lack of curiosity on the part of Slagers comrades at the crime scene, and the readiness with which his supervisors retailed the killers fiction to the public.
The killing of Walter Scott is not reflective of this entire police department, Driggers maintains. One does not throw a blanket across the many.
This was an oddly appropriate choice of metaphor, given that a blanket is used to cover something up. Feiden Santana who, unlike Slagle, did legitimately fear for his life saw the blanket being pulled over the incident and at considerable personal risk made the evidence available to the victims family. Once again: This is the only reason why Slager was fired and charged with murder, rather than being exonerated and most likely given a promotion.
Michael Slagers appearance is that of the clean-cut, all-American family man. His professional behavior was that of a privileged sociopath, which is to be expected: Police officers are vocational sociopaths.
A sociopath, as the term was defined upon its introduction in 1930, is someone who displays a disposition to violate social norms of behavior through deceitfulness
impulsivity
irritability and aggressiveness
[a] reckless disregard for safety of self or others, and a lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Law enforcers as opposed to peace officers, especially private security operatives have official permission to employ aggressive violence and escalate it to lethal levels if they meet resistance. They are clothed in qualified immunity that protects them from accountability and liability for committing acts that would otherwise result in prosecution. As noted above, when they kill someone, police officers are immediately designated the victim, and the decedent is assumed to be the perpetrator.
Owing to the nature of the job at least as its presently defined law enforcement selects for sociopathic personalities, and it is an occupation perfectly calibrated to create secondary sociopaths that is, those who become antisocial because of environmental factors.
In their significant study The Sociopathic Police Personality: Is It a Product of the `Rotten Apple or the `Rotten Barrel? (Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Vol. 14 Number 1), Catherine Griffin and Jim Ruiz of Westfield State College observe: The environment in which police officers work offers unlimited opportunities for corruption and deceit, and these environmental factors may lead to sociopathic behavior.
The extent to which police officers may abuse their authority seems limitless as does the extent fellow officers will go to protect each other, they continue. The loyalty and `brotherhood of the police that appeals to so many has caused many officers to neglect their primary duty: to protect and serve.
Dangling at the end of that sentence is an unspecified direct object: To protect and serve what, or whom? The primary duty of police is to their brotherhood, not the public at large, Griffin and Ruiz explain, because as time goes by, police begin to view the public as their enemies and this causes their antisocial behavior to increase.
Police work acts as a reverse alembic, refining the worst personality elements of those who engage in it. In his 1988 study Personality Characteristics of Supercops and Habitual Criminals (Journal of Police Science and Administration, Vol. 16, pp. 163-167), G.C. Reming found that the behavioral characteristics of police officers who distinguish themselves by their sustained high productivity as measured in self-initiated felony arrests were indistinguishable from those found among habitual criminals.
This should surprise nobody: Both of those groups consist of people who consider themselves licensed to use aggressive violence and selectively exempt from the laws governing lesser people.
Slager wasnt a supercop; he was a perfectly ordinary patrol officer behaving in accordance with the professional standards of the department that employed him. His was the routine, everyday sociopathy of contemporary law enforcement. |