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Scroll down to watch the Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting In a video provided to The New York Times, a police officer in North Charleston, S.C., is seen shooting an apparently unarmed man after a scuffle following a traffic stop.
APRIL 7, 2015
The
officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he had feared for his life because the man
had taken his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic
stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the
man, Walter L. Scott, 50, fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state
charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
The
shooting came on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using
lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere. The deaths
have set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use
force, particularly in cases involving black men.
A White House task force has recommended a host of changes to the nation’s
police policies, and President Obama sent Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.
to cities around the country to try to improve police relations with minority
neighborhoods.
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| Officer Michael T. Slagerm charged for murder for his decision |
North Charleston
is South Carolina’s third-largest city, with a population of about 100,000.
African-Americans make up about 47 percent of residents, and whites account for
about 37 percent. The Police Department is about 80 percent white, according to
data collected by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent period
available.
“When
you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mayor Keith Summey said during the news
conference. “And if you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the
shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision.”
The
shooting unfolded after Officer Slager stopped the driver of a Mercedes-Benz
with a broken taillight, according to police reports. Mr. Scott ran away, and
Officer Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muffler shop. He fired
his Taser,
an electronic stun gun, but it did not stop Mr. Scott, according to police
reports.
Moments
after the struggle, Officer Slager reported on his radio: “Shots fired and the
subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.
But the
video, which was taken by a bystander and provided to The New York Times by the
Scott family’s lawyer, presents a different account. The video begins in the
vacant lot, apparently moments after Officer Slager fired his Taser. Wires,
which carry the electrical current from the stun gun, appear to be extending
from Mr. Scott’s body as the two men tussle and Mr. Scott turns to run.
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Family members
of Walter L. Scott, a black man shot to death by a white South Carolina police
officer, reacted after the mayor of North Charleston said the officer would be
charged with murder.
By
Reuters on Publish Date April 8, 2015. Photo by Reuters. |
Something
— it is not clear whether it is the stun gun — is either tossed or knocked to
the ground behind the two men, and Officer Slager draws his gun, the video
shows. When the officer fires, Mr. Scott appears to be 15 to 20 feet away and
fleeing. He falls after the last of eight shots.
The
officer then runs back toward where the initial scuffle occurred and picks
something up off the ground. Moments later, he drops an object near Mr. Scott’s
body, the video shows.
The South
Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the state’s criminal investigative body, has
begun an inquiry into the shooting. The F.B.I. and the Justice Department,
which has opened a string of civil rights investigations into police
departments under Mr. Holder, is also investigating.
The
Supreme Court has held that an officer may use deadly force
against a fleeing suspect only when there is probable cause that the suspect
“poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer
or others.”
Officer
Slager served in the Coast Guard before joining the force five years ago, his
lawyer said. The police chief of North Charleston did not return repeated
calls. Because police departments are not required to release data on how often
officers use force, it was not immediately clear how often police shootings
occurred in North Charleston, a working-class community adjacent to the tourist
destination of Charleston.
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Mr. Scott
had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or
show up for court hearings, according to The Post and Courier newspaper of
Charleston. He was arrested in 1987 on an assault and battery charge and
convicted in 1991 of possession of a bludgeon, the newspaper reported. Mr.
Scott’s brother, Anthony, said he believed Mr. Scott had fled from the police
on Saturday because he owed child support.
“He has
four children; he doesn’t have some type of big violent past or arrest record,”
said Chris Stewart, a lawyer for Mr. Scott’s family. “He had a job; he was
engaged. He had back child support and didn’t want to go to jail for back child
support.”
Mr.
Stewart said the coroner had told him that Mr. Scott was struck five times —
three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with
at least one bullet entering his heart. It is not clear whether Mr. Scott died
immediately. (The coroner’s office declined to make the report available to The
Times.)
Police
reports say that officers performed CPR and delivered first aid to Mr. Scott.
The video shows that for several minutes after the shooting, Mr. Scott remained
face down with his hands cuffed behind his back. A second officer arrives, puts
on blue medical gloves and attends to Mr. Scott, but is not shown performing
CPR. As sirens wail in the background, a third officer later arrives,
apparently with a medical kit, but is also not seen performing CPR.
The
debate over police use of force has been propelled in part by videos like the
one in South Carolina. In January, prosecutors in Albuquerque charged two
police officers with murder for shooting a homeless man in a confrontation that
was captured by an officer’s body camera. Federal prosecutors are investigating
the death of Eric Garner, who died last year in
Staten Island after a police officer put him in a chokehold, an episode that a
bystander captured on video. A video taken in Cleveland shows the police
shooting a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, who was carrying a fake gun in a park.
A White House policing panel recommended that police departments put more video cameras on their officers.
Mr.
Scott’s brother said his mother had called him on Saturday, telling him that
his brother had been shot by a Taser after a traffic stop. “You may need to go
over there and see what’s going on,” he said his mother told him. When he
arrived at the scene of the shooting, officers told him that his brother was
dead, but he said they had no explanation for why. “This just doesn’t sound
right,” he said in an interview. “How do you lose your life at a traffic stop?”
Anthony
Scott said he last saw his brother three weeks ago at a family oyster roast.
“We hadn’t hung out like that in such a long time,” Mr. Scott said. “He kept on
saying over and over again how great it was.”
At the
roast, Mr. Scott got to do two of the things he enjoyed most: tell jokes and
dance. When one of Mr. Scott’s favorite songs was played, he got excited. “He
jumped up and said, ‘That’s my song,’ and he danced like never before,” his
brother said.
Ben
Rothenberg contributed reporting from North Charleston, S.C. Kitty Bennett and
Sarah Cohen contributed research.
Culled from NEW YORK TIMES
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