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Another unarmed black man shot in America
Other | Wednesday 8th April 2015 | Christina
33-year-old Michael Slager, a white police officer from South Carolina, has been charged with murder after he fatally shot 50-year-old Walter Scott in the back. A video has surfaced which clearly shows Slager fire eight shots into Scott’s back as he runs away, before yelling for him to put his hands behind his back. Slager then handcuffs Scott as he lies motionless on the ground.
According to Slager, in comments he made before the video became public, he feared for his life because Scott had taken his Taser from him. In the police radio recording, Slager states “Shot fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser.” Although the video is shaky at the start, an object, probably the Taser, clearly falls to the ground as Scott begins to run away from Slager, who then pulls his gun out. After the shots are fired and Scott is on the ground, Slager goes back to pick an object up off the ground and drops it by Scott.
The idea that Slager feared for his life is ludicrous. The moment Scott turns away to run he is no longer a threat to anyone, if he ever was, and indicates that he himself felt threatened. The excessive force and the suspicious movements of Slager following the shots make his claims even less credible.
Scott, who had a minor criminal past – arrests for failure to pay child support and one arrest for assault and battery in 1987 – was initially stopped for a broken brake light on his car. His brother and his attorney suggest that he fled from Slager because he didn’t want to go to jail for outstanding child support.
Slager has been charged with murder, and has been denied bond. He is also eligible for the death penalty and is facing a Department of Justice investigation. In 2013 Slager had a complaint of excessive force filed against him after he Tasered a man duing a burglary investigation, but he was cleared of wrongdoing.
According to the Charleston Post and Courier, 45% of North Charleston residents are black, and 4 out of 5 police officers are white. The Scott’s attorney L. Chris Stewart made it clear that the shooting is not simply a race issue. As he said at a press conference, “It speaks to the value of human life, which is a bigger issue than trying to just make this a small issue of race. This is a bigger issue of human life and the value of it. And when people start respecting that more, it won’t matter what color you are.”
The shooting, which comes in the wake of incidents in New York, Cleveland and Ferguson, is also an issue of power – Stewart has suggested that Slager was only arrested because the altercation was caught on video, showing the police officer’s version of events to be false. Without the video, this may well have been swept under the rug.
