Finally, a cop being charged with murder for killing someone:
A white South Carolina police officer will be charged with murder over the shooting death of a black man who appeared to be fleeing from him, local authorities said on Tuesday.
A video of the Saturday incident, in which North Charleston police officer Michael Slager appeared to shoot a man identified by local media as 50-year-old Walter Scott, was viewed by state investigators, and a decision was made to charge Slager with murder, North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey told a news conference.
As you can see in the video, he just straight up emptied a clip into an unarmed man running from him, then walked over to him and planted his taser on him:
Seeing how nonchalantly he planted the evidence, you really have to wonder how often this happens every single damned day. Any bets how high his gofundme account will be tomorrow onceFox news chimes and the rw nutjobs chime in. Who will set it up? Tea Party Patriots, Stormfront, Fox news viewers, Limbaugh listeners, or Patrick Lynch and Jeff Roorda of the NYC PBA and SLPOA, respectively?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
I know I shouldn’t be shocked by anything cops do at this point, but the fact that he straight-up murdered this man IN BROAD DAYLIGHT … I mean, WTF can you even say?
blueskies
I’ve been reading at various places about the planting of the taser, supposedly at 1:41, but I don’t see it. Does it happen at some other time point?
Frank Wilhoit
@Mnemosyne (tablet): you can say what John said, which is that it happens every day. It also happens in places where the victims of convenience are not black, which doesn’t make it any better. It also takes lesser forms than murder, which doesn’t make it any better.
JPL
@blueskies: Watch the four minutes and the officer returns to the place where the scuffle occurred and picks something up and returns and drops it by the body. Is it a taser? I don’t know but why do that?
Brutusettu
Since the cop now knows that most of it was caught on tape and he already filed a police report, if the cop wants to get funds from not-racist, he might need, but find it difficult, to spice things up.
The police report and video will make it difficult for him to claim his head was repeatedly bounced off of concrete or some other BS.
blueskies
@JPL: I’m missing the frames where Slager drops something by the body. What time point in the video?
Hal
Hey NY Times. Can you give us a profile of the Cop vs the victim?
Ok. How about Mr. Scott?
Well thank you! Even with all of this caught on video, make sure you devote an entire paragraph to the victims arrests, even if it was 25 years ago. Office Slager meanwhile is probably a saint with a pristine background.
TooManyJens
The New York Times slowed down the video and highlighted the object (which certainly could be the taser) that the officer dropped. It starts around 1:30 on the video in this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html?_r=0
Howard Beale IV
This officer is a dead man walking. The only question is when he will be dispatched.
srv
@blueskies: He clearly walked back for something, picked it up. AFAIK, looks like he tosses it to the ground and then reaches down to pick it up. But not sure that’s the toss point.
charluckles
I honestly think this might be different. It is too blatant to ignore. It’s going to be portrayed as the work of a single bad apple, but that is a straight up execution by a member of the law enforcement community.
Joel
An indictment is a start. Hoping for more.
satby
@Hal: You know, they go on about all these petty and sometimes not so petty crimes when this happens, but no one ever points out that not paying child support or stealing cigarillos is not a death penalty offense. But it wouldn’t matter, we have a huge number of gun nuts armed to the teeth hoping to be able to kill someone stealing their stuff some day.So they’d think it was justified to shoot down a cigarillo-snatcher anyway. As we all saw.
lamh36
he was stopped for having “a” broken tail lamp, but…
JPL
@blueskies: You really need to watch the video to get the entire picture. It is after the 8 shots.
lamh36
posted on previous thread.
I believe that certain media is just looking for a mugshot for Walter Scott (that is the media’s M.O. in these cases), but instead hopefully they show this pick of Walter Scott in his uniform when he was a member of the Coast Guard.
Walter Scott Coast Guard Vet
Oh and the original lawyer for the officer is no longer with him. IDK, maybe he got a better one, or the lawyer learned of the tape and decided he couldn’t do it.
J R in WV
I’ve had lots of encounters with police officers where I was either speeding, or needed help after an accident. I have to say whenever I was pulled over I was treated well, even if they wrote a citation.
When we had accidents, they were totally professional – after we totaled the PU truck last winter in New Mexico, one young officer gave me and the dogs a ride to the vet in town so I could get the dogs checked out.
There was a swarm of officers, even a captain, I suspect it was the most excitement they had in quite a while, as it was a rural area. Everyone was helpful.
But now!
I can’t believe how many people are getting shot for nothing. I know it’s a big country with lots of people, some of whom are obviously very bad. And you can’t tell the bad guys from the good guys just from their outfit, can you?
Makes me worry about that next traffic stop! How can you predict how you will be treated? I drive nicer cars now, and I’m a white bearded old guy, now. But still, you gotta worry after seeing these murders happen all over the country.
I still can’t get past the cops in Walmart shooting the guy with a BB gun he wanted to buy the very second they saw him, for nothing!! Bam., Bam, Bam.
Mike in NC
Cops kill unarmed citizens every day of the week in this country. The media generally ignores it, and the paranoid old white folks who watch FOX News argue that they must have had it coming.
Mary G
@J R in WV: Yeah, I am a white person who lives in a wealthy area and cops have always been nice as pie to me. I think the wingnuts just can’t understand that their same experiences aren’t necessarily duplicated when poorer, darker people are involved.
PaulW
My question: what happens to his fellow cops who signed off on his bullshit statement?
At the very least they lied as well. If they were civilians I’d guarantee you they’d be charged as accessories to murder after the fact.
Thin blue line is now more powerful and deadly than the mafia’s omerta. The Sopranos are safer to be with than cops now.
BBA
Of course the cop is going to walk. He was just doing his job, the job you and I pay him to do, after all.
Seth
@Mary G: Unfortunately I think a lot of them understand that their experience is not duplicated when poorer, darker people are involved, they just are ok with that.
JPL
@BBA: I’d love to know how much they pay him Since we have adopted a guns everywhere mentality and hire cops with minimum of experience and at low pay, is this the new normal.
also.. thank the lord for phones with cameras
lamh36
@PaulW: Good question. You see the 2nd cop at the end who checks for pulse I think and there wasn’t any apparent difference in the reports or at the very least the 2nd cop signed off on the report.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Frank Wilhoit:
You know, I realize I’m supposed to be all jaded and say, “Ho-hum, another day, another police murder, so what?” but I just can’t. I fucking can’t.
JPL
@Mary G: ditto
RepubAnon
The cop will be given a plea bargain – and next time, they’ll make sure to seize any video right away.
It’s like the cop who shot the guy who reached into his car for his wallet – when there’s video, it’s hard to deny what happened.
JPL
@lamh36: I watched the video a few times and couldn’t tell whether or not the second police officer knew the first one dropped something. He seemed pretty busy to me.
Howard Beale IV
@efgoldman: If in the event he does do time, odds are he’ll be in solitary just to make sure no one in GenPop puts a shiv to him.
east is east
Put a goddamn bodycam on every cop in the country. They’re all torn up about this at the police station because it got recorded, not because a man was murdered.
Violet
Has the person who took the video come forward at all? I wouldn’t if I were them. I didn’t watch to the very end. Did the cops see the person with the phone/camera?
NotMax
It’s a horrific, unjustified action.
Not fully up on the variety of firearms, but it seems unlikely eight shots would empty a clip.
lamh36
Fucking Don Lemon, interviewed members of the family and and their attorneys and acutally asked them about the car the Walter Scott was driving…apparently it was a Mercedes or something…
What da fuck does it matter who’s car or what type of car the man was driving Don!!! And even so, why da fuck do you ask a damn dead man’s family that question?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@east is east:
A bit of anecdata — a work friend of mine has friends from high school who are cops, and they LOVE having bodycams. Because they realize it protects them against false accusations. The only cops who don’t want bodycams are shitty cops who know they’re breaking the law and don’t want to be caught.
JPL
@Violet: The police would like him/her to offer their thanks.
It was actually two videos that the Nytimes received.
@lamh36: Hang in there. I assume they are looking at elementary school grades by now to help discredit him.
pseudonymous in nc
The noteworthy thing here is that there was already a lot of reporting on this shooting with the cops’ narrative, and then the video appeared and it turns out the initial reporting was based on bullshit and lies. And that makes you wonder: how many times?
Even the NYT decided to run the standard “white cop’s service record, black victim’s criminal record” juxtaposition as part of its write-up.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@lamh36:
I don’t know if this will turn out to be the case, but a lot of people here in So Cal drive diesel Mercedes from the 1970s because they’re workhorses and never break down.
lamh36
@RepubAnon: the video wasn’t turned over to the police first.
From what I heard from reporter on Maddow. The video was recorded by a young member of that community, and “they” were conflicted on whether or not to give video to LEO. No surprise there, seeing how the Eric Garner case and Mike Brown in Ferguson case, where LEOs selectively released parts of the recording as PR to infect jury pool rather than to get justice for victim. Instead the recorder, gave the video to the family of Walter Scott and there legal counsel then gave it to NYT and then LEO.
So you see the LEO first going with Slager’s account and then boom NYT publishes video and quickly the officer is charged with murder.
Tehanu
Well, OBVIOUSLY he was a threat to the entire community! We can’t have police brought up on charges for taking down murderers and rapists and robbers and guys with low incomes, can we? /racist asshole rant
GregB
What is most disgusting is the strongest defenders of such police brutality and violence are also many of the same folks who go on at length about the tyranny of taxes, the EPA, yadda…yadda..yadda….
Peale
@lamh36: didn’t lemon respond to Chris Rock’s videos by asking whether or not Rock should drive a different car if he didn’t want to be stopped? I think it’s his pet theory to explain away profiling. Next we’ll test Geraldo’s theory that Scott was listening to threatening rap music and brought this on himself for being tall.
Peale
@RepubAnon: and pass laws making posting a video like this illegal without permission of the police.
Anyway, it looks like the police don’t want the Feds to come in and look things over. Quick indictment. No protests…hmmmm. I wonder if they have judges too who aren’t paying taxes.
coin operated
@lamh36:
Yep…same way I see it.
If I was the head dictator in charge, every LEO would be wearing a body cam, and every LEO shooting would be investigated by independent council with binding authority and treated as a homicide. This shit has got to stop.
@PaulW:
Don’t know…have not heard much about the other cops statements other than the rumor that they all claimed CPR was performed on scene…which clearly wasn’t the case.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Mary G: I am a white person who lives in one of the country’s wealthiest places and I watched the cops take my 70 year old, white as can be neighbor and cuff and stuff him in the back of a hot car for three hours while they “investigated” a burglary that he had phoned in. When his also extremely white neighbor came out and started yelling at them, they threatened to have her arrested too. A lawyer was recording the entire proceedings. They DID NOT GIVE A FUCK.
I’d like to say it was the first time here but that would be an utter lie. The cops here have been scary and aggressive and out of control for decades now.
The cops are after your ass, black, white, brown, doesn’t make any difference any more to them, they have a quota of arrests and a love of beatdowns and hey, if you get to Dirty Harry a few guys along the way so much the better. I’ve been terrified of cops for the last 30 years. Everyone should have been. And everyone damn well better be scared of them now.
coin operated
I have only one other thought. We need to start calling this what it really is…Summary Execution.
serge
I hope that Walter Scott’s family receives justice. Hopefully this should ratchet the issue of cop cameras up to 11. They have to have them, and they must absolutely, under no circumstances, turn them off. We’ve seen already that the smarter, more evil pigs turn them off before getting out the truncheons.
I live in Charleston, and that this has happened up the road doesn’t surprise me, but I was utterly gobsmacked when I saw the film tonight. Am I alone in recognizing the bizarre irony that at least twice in SC, in this instance now and the cop shooting the man up in Columbia who was shot while “following the policeman’s instructions,” the policemen involved have actually been arrested. In New York, and Chicago, and Missouri nothing happens. Head into the deep South, still longing for that good old ante-bellum vibe, and an arrest happens. Really?
Lacywood
@TooManyJens: You are right. At 1:37 on the NY Times video, you see the officer drop a gun (stun gun?) shaped object from his right hand as he returns to the body. It’s unmistakable at full screen view…And the other cop is right there at the time. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/us/south-carolina-officer-is-charged-with-murder-in-black-mans-death.html?_r=0
mai naem mobile
I mentioned this during the Michael Brown deal and another commenter immediately said Nope, cops are taught to shoot to kill. To me it looks like the cop was almost leisurely shooting Scott. Why couldn’t he shoot Scott in his legs or even his butt instead of his back? BTW, to me its obvious the cop was trying to plant something on Scott. Also too, he seemed to be in absolutely no hurry to call the paramedics or do any kind of emergency care on Scott.
WaterGirl
Maybe I’m cynical, but I wonder if they arrested this murdering cop as a way to keep the DOJ out of it. Once the DOJ gets involved, you never know what else they might find.
Maybe the DOJ can make a policy that they will investigate every single time a police officer kills someone. That might be a way to stop this open season on black men.
WaterGirl
@mai naem mobile: Dead men tell no tales.
Peale
Sounds like certain boroughs in North Jersey.
Mike in NC
@CONGRATULATIONS!: From the time I was in high school until today, I aways understood you had to kiss the ass of the scumbag cop who pulled you over.
Mike J
@mai naem mobile:
It’s really hard to actually hit anything at that distance. You’re shooting for center mass. If you aim for limbs you simply won’t hit.
Obviously he shouldn’t have been firing at all, but if you do fire, you aim for the biggest part of the target. If you miss, the bullet keeps going and might hit somebody else.
Seth
@mai naem mobile: Why shoot him at all? He was obviously not an immediate threat to anyone.
David Koch
False flag operation.
This is obviously fabricated.
/Stand w Rand
catbirdman
Seems to me it took a lot of guts for the witness to stand there filming after what he just witnessed. I’d have been peeing myself or worse, waiting for that executioner to turn his weapon on me. Maybe it’s because there was a second cop there that he figured he wouldn’t get the same treatment?
lamh36
@WaterGirl: maybe, but I saw a tweet that the DOJ Civil Rights division along with FBI will be involved.
M. Bouffant
Police officers have carried cheap guns to plant on their victims since time immemorial. The only twist here is that it was a taser.
WaterGirl
@lamh36: Glad to hear that. I shudder to imagine the DOJ in a republican administration, then there would be no recourse.
Bobby Thomson
A couple of assholes in Vineland just beat and sicced a dog on a mental case who died in custody. The punching cop looked like something out of Abu Ghraib.
lamh36
@M. Bouffant:
Dave Chapelle – Police Brutality, “Sprinkle Some Crack On Them”
laugh not to cry.
cckids
@Hal:
Well, the local newspaper made sure to print that “he always kept his squad car tidy”. Because that is vital info.
lamh36
@lamh36: and this is from Chapelles stand up special “Killing Me Softly” from 2000. yet his description and antecdote is still relevant 15 years later
scav
oh dear, has everyone so quicky forgetten the truly oppressed in ‘merka, the truly threatened in ‘merka, those forced, yeah verily forced to deliver foodstuffs and flowers to people at celebrations of which they do not approve?
Hgifjyfuuttghrf jtgu^%#|*#{^}#
And wouldn’t it just be interesting to know why the first lawyer left or was replaced.
cckids
To me, as disgusting and scary as the cop’s/LEO’s actions are here, are all the comments I just know are flowing from the wingers, justifying this murder. “Why did he run?”, etc. These low-life creeps have found justification for the killings of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Eric Gardner, even Tamir Rice. There is always something they “should” have done differently, so the cops wouldn’t have been forced to murder them. How do you become the kind of person who thinks like that?? It’s both mystifying and depressing that we share the country with so, SO many of them.
Mandalay
@WaterGirl:
There is good news on that:
Justice Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said the Federal Bureau of Investigation will also investigate the shooting.
coin operated
@scav: He left, and I would probably leave too. Spend all day Saturday spinning furiously for your client, only to shown as a fool 48 hours later.
WaterGirl
@Mandalay: That is good news.
After all these recent cold-blooded murders of black men, I really have to wonder how many mothers are out there whose black sons have also been murdered in cold blood, but the officers have gotten away with it.
It’s horrible to think that it might be hundreds. but at this rate, is it crazy to wonder if it might be thousands?
worn
@serge: Well, somewhat surprisingly, the Treason State has been leading the way on this the last little while:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/05/south-carolina-indicted-three-white-cops-in-four-months-and-its-probably-not-a-coincidence/
Mandalay
@PaulW:
I was wondering that as well. According to this report:
If that report is accurate then at least three people (Slager plus at least two witnesses) claim to have seen Scott fighting for the taser – something that clearly never happened.
Jordan Rules
@lamh36:
This here. Sigh.
Mandalay
@lamh36:
Someone commenting on the NYT’s article on this had a simple and elegant proposal that would have prevented this situation ever arising:
I wonder how many people would still be alive if that proposal became law throughout the country. Everyone knows that stopping someone for a broken tail lamp is just a flimsy pretext to fuck with them.
Tenar Darell
@lamh36: The interesting unstated fact about how this video got released is that this means there is a general assumption in that town that the police and local prosecutors are not trusted to handle evidence of guilty cops. Which means the justice department should definitely investigate them.
Violet
@Mandalay: I suppose some sort of “scuffle” could have happened before the video began, but even so that doesn’t change the fact that the cop executed this man. And the witnesses who said otherwise? They lied.
JordanRules
@Mandalay: This definitely should be done, but wouldn’t really make much of a difference in this issue IMO.
There would be other ways, codified or not, to pull people over for the hell of it. Now if white folks were feeling the burn of that policy (unofficial or not) too then maybe something will be looked at and really worked on.
Mike J
@WaterGirl:
Thousands easily. This has been happening since 1865. Before that killing a black man wasn’t even murder, it was just a property crime. I’d guess at least 100 a year for 150 years.
JordanRules
@Violet: Yup and at some point it really doesn’t matter what happened prior to the video. My response to Rodney King beating sympathizers was always, it doesn’t effing matter what happened before – you clearly see who ended up with the power and summarily abused it.
And damn…I just had a thought about how devastated we all were back then watching that video and to think now that getting your ass absolutely pummeled with no regard for your life might be better than getting executed via multiple gunshots. Damnet!!!!!!! I refuse to let that particular Overton Window move for me. Fuck no.
JordanRules
@Mike J: There is a thread from those early days till now that absolutely binds and it needs to be taught, addressed and actively engaged against vigilantly.
scav
@cckids: so, they agree that all we need to do is send out a single LEO to check the tail light status, pick up the back taxes and errant cows of one C. Bundy and it’s justifiable to drill him if he doesn’t immediately comply? Ruby Ridge and Waco were so automatically totally o-one correct procedure that is to say? Badges were involved there, so it must be true, right?
Mandalay
@Violet:
Indeed, and someone with no apparent agenda either way has come up with an interesting theory on how the cop may try to defend himself:
I know what I saw on the video, and I know that he has been charged with murder, but IANAL and we have seen so many cops escape justice that I will be pleasantly surprised if he is actually found guilty of murder.
sharl
There were elections in Ferguson MO today, and while not providing a basis for ecstatic joy and celebration, both the turnout and the results were definitely encouraging:
Knowing many fellow members of my Low Melanin Tribe as I do, I’m not sure that the well meaning comment from Mr. Rice would go over well with a lot of already/always jumpy and frightened white folk – even the less racist in that bunch – but given the margin of Mr. Hudgins’ loss, I doubt the comment made a big difference (if any).
I’d been occasionally looking in on a few Ferguson-related twitter accounts leading up to today, and could see that a lot of folks were busting their asses to get out the vote. Ferguson Dem committeewoman Patricia Bynes was a dynamo, and a lot of help came into the area via student volunteers who were part of #FergusonASB* (ASB=alternative Spring Break).
All those folks done good.
*If you’re not in a good mood, clicking on that FergusonASB link probably won’t help; as happens so often in situations like this, racists, trolls and haterzzz can use the hash tag just like everyone else. Le Sigh…
Tommy
@Violet: Isn’t there a Johnny Cash song about shooting a man down for no reason?
gwangung
@Mandalay: Interesting theory.
But….even armed with a taser, a fleeing suspect doesn’t really present an immediate danger to the cop or people around him.
Though, that probably wouldn’t make a difference to the usual suspects.
Felanius Kootea
What is it going to take for this to stop? I don’t think it is enough for the cop to get charged. The other officers who helped him falsify his report or said nothing at all when they knew he was lying through his teeth need to be charged as well or this will never end.
Felanius Kootea
@Mandalay: Jesus! Over a broken tail light! Can we send all these itchy trigger finger cops over to Cliven Bundy’s place? It’s amazing how they *don’t* shoot when they know they face a well-armed group of opponents.
Aleta
Equally chilling to watch the cops stand around without doing CPR or any other first aid. The murdering policeman asked for his “kit” to be brought from his car (a first aid kit ?) and when a first aid kit is brought it just sits there. His first move was to order a dying man to put his hands behind his back. Then plant the taser. Cold, cold.
Tree With Water
@Violet: I wondered about that as I watched the video. The cop appeared oblivious to the fact he was being filmed, although the footage was (seemingly) recorded from an exposed area maybe 50 yards from the shooting. The vantage point even changes as the cameraman strolls around the scene while continuing to film, yet the other officers that are seen responding don’t seem to notice being filmed either…. the reaction of the FOX crowd to this cold blooded murder will be interesting to note.
Kitty
@Mnemosyne (tablet): @Mnemosyne (tablet): Guilty as charged
TriassicSands
@M. Bouffant:
The cop’s story was that the “perp” had taken his taser from him. That seems to be why he retrieved it — from where they had been standing before the shooting — and dropped it near the body. He had to make it look like the man he had just killed was in possession of the taser when he was shot. The video makes any story difficult (to impossible) to support. Even if Scott had had the taser, it wouldn’t have posed much of a threat while he was running away from Slager.
@Mandalay:
If you look at the very beginning of the video, the two are tussling and the taser (presumably) ends up on the ground. At that point it isn’t possible to tell if they are fighting for the taser or if the officer has tasered or is trying to taser Scott. Scott may have been running away to keep from being tasered (again?).
Botsplainer
@Felanius Kootea:
An overseas billionaire sponsoring an assault rifle giveaway in impoverished American urban areas, along with a badge bounty. Bonus for badges with holes.
That could provide an impetus for far less petty policing. Fewer opportunities for application of the “broken window” law enforcement model…
Zinsky
White cop vs. negro man means the negro is always guilty and any force needed is just fine. This has been the rule in America since the 1600s.
History is a harsh teacher.
raven
@Tommy: Folsom Prison Blues. Also, Me and My Uncle by Bob Weir.
EconWatcher
As a white middle-aged guy, I’m sure I’m not as sensitive to subtle racism as I should be. But if you go to Charleston, you don’t have to have sensitive antennae.
Nowhere in America that I’ve ever been have I ever seen that kind of blatant, shameless, disgusting racism. Several local lawyers that I had the misfortune of lunching with threw around the “n” word with no hesitation at all. Coming from educated, well-to-do people, it’s more shocking and grotesque than, for example, from my impoverished Indiana redneck relatives. The black folks that I saw looked just beaten down. The place feels like the Civil War never happened. The city is amazingly beautiful and amazingly ugly at the same time. Never going back there. Gives me the creeps just thinking about it.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@raven: I think he meant “I Shot a Man in Reno.”
raven
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym: That is Folsom Prison Blues.
Tommy
@EconWatcher:
Oh I know. I have had to have a conversation with more than a few people on this topic. What the fuck are you doing using that word. It is offensive. They can’t seem to get it.
raven
Me and My Uncle
blueskies
@TooManyJens: Yep, much clearer in the NYT video. Thanks.
EconWatcher
@raven:
Great, great song. Second only to his cover of Hurt by Nine Inch Nails.
Tommy
@raven: What I am listening to on repeat.
Lavocat
@JordanRules: Jesus, I had those same exact thoughts!
What next, they come for you AND YOUR FAMILY, in the dead of night, and SWAT-kill all of you? I put nothing past these fascists. Nothing.
Lavocat
@Tommy: You’ve been infected by John Denver.
Matt McIrvin
Every place this video has been posted, there are comments saying the victim had it coming. “Well, why did he run? Why do you people bash cops for just doing their jobs and shooting criminals?”
There is nothing the police can do that won’t get support. Literally nothing.
Sherparick
@J R in WV: It is a very big country, over 315 million people and counting, and counting local, state, and Federal probably a couple million law enforcement officers. One asshole in a hundred, still means that there are several thousand assholes in law enforcement and the assholes are the ones who invoke the “don’t snitch” blue wall of silence to get away with doing what they want to whom they want. (This is what Lord Acton meant by power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely – when you have power and find that you can get away with abusing people and no one holds you accountable, well you keep on doing it and your example corrupts your colleagues.) By the way, several Teahardist State Legislatures have drafted and are considering an ALEC model bill that would make what the citizen did in this case – videotaping the murder of Walter Scott – a crime, although the Supreme Court and the 1st and 7th Circuit courts have ruled that doing so has 1st Amendment protections. http://gizmodo.com/5900680/7-rules-for-recording-police.
Applejinx
You know, I think I understand some of this stuff about ‘indictments happening in the Deep South’. And it’s unsettling but strangely hopeful (though far from where it needs to be).
Consider it like this: the deep South is a culture of Honor. Before you immediately burst into bitter mocking laughter, look at Eric Garner, look at how New York’s acted. Now look at indictments in South Carolina.
Honor is a form of tacit agreement to social order. It’s a form of respect, and it generates expectation. We can easily see honor leading to ugly behavior (like vengeance in the Old West, for instance: ‘honor dictates that there must be a killing’) but imagine a Deep South cracker saying this:
“You don’t just shoot a dog, and you don’t just shoot a n****r”
and meaning every word of it. They’re an outrageous bigot unclear on what makes a human being, if they live by those words, and could use some serious educating, but they are safer for a black man to be around than the cops that killed Eric Garner.
Because the culture of honor can also hold requirements for how you treat those ‘lesser than you’, and a culture of just unscrupulous advantage has no such expectations.
We may be able to make some progress away from the insane state to which things have sunk, by attempting to recognize this culture of honor (also present among gun nuts) where it presents itself. We (I’m a Vermonter and total Yankee all my life) can’t encourage it because it’s not ours to encourage, but by God sometimes I see it. South Carolina understands justice and honor in a way New York and Missouri apparently don’t.
And you don’t just shoot a (fill in the blank).
Applejinx
@Applejinx: Hell, they might even kill the cop (admittedly an unlikely prospect). South Carolina’s been known to kill people for murder. They might see it as the honorable thing to do, and that would sure as hell exert a chilling effect on other South Carolina cops tempted to just murder black people.
You cannot simply assume Southern honor means ‘happily go around killing those weaker than you’. It’s laughable… and it matters in situations like this.
Fred
I don’t know anything about Charleston but I did live in SC for a short time (as short as I could make it) and if the jury is predominantly white I would give odds the guy walks.
debbie
The Fox station in my area didn’t show the video (of course), but the NBC affiliate did. The cop was accused of using too much force before, but he was cleared. That should also be investigated.
Matt McIrvin
@Applejinx: “Southern honor” is, more than anything else, enforcement of a hierarchy, which includes permission for essentially limitless cruelty to anyone of lower status who steps out of line or doesn’t behave like a saint. You treat people with respect if they’re of higher status, or following the rules as you see them. But an effeminate boy, a woman who gets drunk at your frat party, a black man who walks away from a cop? Fair game.
Tommy
@Lavocat: Yeah I have had been.
Bruce K
I just heard about this on the news while getting my hair cut over my lunch break this afternoon. Not too unusual, except that I was in downtown Athens, Greece at the time.
So this latest incident/atrocity is getting global coverage…
Cervantes
@Applejinx:
Too late — by a split second, but still too late.
Cervantes
@Matt McIrvin:
Seems that way.
Except maybe when said police entities voice support for gun control.
SuperHrefna
Maybe this will be the one that opens Privileged America’s eyes to what is going on with the police, that’s is not just bad apples it’s a rotten orchard. But I’ve hoped that before, and the murders always ended up being explained away as something so singular it can’t possibly be systematic. Please let that not happen this time.
celticdragonchick
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
After getting away with this shit for a century with respect to black people, brown people and working class whites engaged in strikes, cops in some areas have figured out they can get away with this with almost anybody…and upper class whites are finally starting to notice (somewhat).
Paul in KY
@J R in WV: I’m guessing you are white. If so, just don’t be a complete dick & you’ll be fine (sad to say).
cmorenc
@EconWatcher:
The delicious irony is that Tim Scott, the incumbent AA US Senator from SC (and before that, US Congressman from the district containing Charleston) was elected with the support of legions of these whites you say are blatant racists. You may think at first that I am contradicting you, but actually I am not – native white southerners such as myself understand this conundrum whereby whites harboring deeply racist attitudes nevertheless accept a minority of blacks who appear to have assimilated culturally, socially, and politically into polite southern ways, such that they become like auxiliary members of the white community, and distinctly unlike the “others” who behave like stereotypical “niggers” eating T-bone steaks and shiftlessly living off welfare.
This dynamic is old enough to stretch back into the pre-Civil Right era of legal segregation, except in that era Tim Scott would never have gotten farther than to be elected to the Charleston City Council, or maybe state representative from a predominately black district. And respected only for the practical reason that one faction or another sometimes needed his vote – mainly on City Council, less often so in the state legislature – and so, they’d call him that “colored” legislator or councilman instead of that “nigger” legislator or councilman. It’s “good negroes” (a minority of blacks) vs “bad niggers” (most of them), a distinction firmly held by many white southern minds that may have softened a tad, but never come close to ending, even 50+ years since the fundamental Civil Rights legislation and SCOTUS decisions ended de jure segregation.
pluky
@lamh36: Defense rule number 1 – Do not lie to your attorney.
gvg
The second officer was black. Anyone else notice that? Did he lie for the blue line too?
Every arrest this cop made before ought to be looked at. Of course that is what I thought after the OJ trial when it came out that the lead investigator had boasted before the murder to other cops how easy it was to plant evidence. I thought OJ was guilty but a police department that ignored the implications of what what’s hic name was saying….Mark something, was a crooked department.
Until very recently I would have assumed the cops were telling the truth on the stand in most cases, however not every department. After the OJ trial and what came out about that detective, if I had been on a jury in that jurisdiction I would have doubted every parking ticket. Enough jurors with that attitude, and a department would be unable to afford to function. Reputation matters. We need to start tracking different departments, not lumping them all together, which local people will”know” is wrong and ignore.
Its not safe for whites to have police this out of control. That point needs to be made many times. Corruption like that doesn’t stay away.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY: That is quite possibly not necessarily so. Cops are feeling on edge right now. The odds of survival for a white man are way better, though.
Larryb
@Mandalay: The story of the “tussle” is somewhat believable since you can see the object on the ground at the beginning of the video. Also plausible is the idea that the cop incorrectly thought the guy was running away with his Taser. Things get confusing in a fight. Is shooting a man [you think is] running away with a stun gun justified? I don’t think so, but then IANAL. At the very, very least, they’ve got him on planting evidence on the body to clean up his story and then lying about it in the police report.
lawguy
@east is east: They had body cams where I practice for a while. Interestingly enough, they would always stop working when they might have recorded anything that would have shown the officers in less than stellar light.
boatboy_srq
@Mary G:
Not merely that; there’s an expectation that Those People won’t be able to “get away with it.” Mustn’t forget the resentment for being taxed for T-bones and Cadillacs for The Undeserving™: enforcement tactics are just one part of that. BTW anyone thinking that just being the right shade of not-brown will get you off the hook hasn’t been a Yankee tourist in the Deep South: there’s plenty of resentment for Northern Aggression™ still perpetuated down that way, and enforcement tactics differ depending on where one’s ID was issued nearly as much as on where one’s ancestors came from. Louisiana is a fairly recent example of how parts of the US deal with Folks Not From There: apparently not only were they stopping motorists whose only crime was driving a car licensed in one of the other 49 and seizing the vehicle because something something ILLEGAL, but they were doing it with their badge in one hand and a vehicle shopping list in the other.
boatboy_srq
@cmorenc: @gvg: I think your comments have more in common than either of you thought.
moderateindy
@raven: Me and My Uncle was actually written by John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas, not by Bob Weir (or more appropriately Barlow, Weirs writing partner/lyricist)
It is actually a funny story. Phillips wrote it one night in a hotel with Neil Young, Stephen Stills, and Judy Collins. Collins recorded it on a tape, and recorded it later without phillips knowledge. Thing was Phillips was so hammered he had no recollection of writing the tune even after Collins played him the original tape recording.
Also, the cowboy in the song had a perfectly good reason for shooting his Uncle, he wanted the gold.
moderateindy
At the very beginning of the tape it looks like the Taser falls to the ground. So it is plausible that there was a struggle for the taser. So effin what. That doesn’t give the cop a reason to unload a bunch of shots at a guy that is running away and poses absolutely no threat to him. He didn’t even pursue the guy, he just drew his weapon, and opened fire at an unarmed man running away. There is a deep cancer in cop culture in this country. People like to justify this crap with memes like, “they have a very dangerous job”, which is untrue. Cops aren’t even in the top 25 as far as fatalities go. And most deaths are actually heart attacks, followed by car accidents. Look how few times police in Europe discharge their weapons in comparison. I don’t know if it is the proliferation of ex-military people that have made the cops more aggressive, but something has certainly been adversely affecting that overall culture, a culture that was pretty crappy to start with.
TG Chicago
Looks like there was indeed a gofundme page until gofundme killed it.
http://www.ibtimes.com/gofundme-removes-michael-slager-fundraising-page-set-support-walter-scotts-killer-1874686
But there’s now a page on indiegogo.