Officer Charged With Murder in SC

Don't like the cut away of the cellphone coverage before the incident considering that the video starts on the approach but loses time to the actual shooting. For all the evidence at the end, seeing what happened moving up to that point is very relevant. Still, I saw the Times video, so who knows who edited what.

That said - the shooting was completely unjustified, IMO, seeing the footage that is present. Scott breaks contact and runs away, Slager has ample time to calmly draw, aim, and fire - including a delayed, aimed 8th round - into the back of a fleeing suspect. I don't know Slager's health, but seeing Scott run in the video there should have been no issue with running him down, dude was flat out SLOW (he's 50 for craps sake).

And the Tazer drop? Come on.

This whole mess is wrong; the officer was wrong, the way the encounter was handled was wrong - wrong, wrong, wrong. Charges are appropriate IMO. I also appreciate that the family's lawyers are aiming it away from racial, but that won't stop the baiters from coming out in full force demanding retribution and fundamental change.

That does look pretty bad (if that is in fact what he dropped). I watched the video a few times on both an iPad and a phone, but couldn't make out what he dropped. Too grainy.

Here's a series of pics from the Daily Mail though.



Daily Mail : Video shows Patrolman Michael Slager, 33, 'picking up Taser and placing it next to Scott's body after the shooting' (*Click*)

I'm wondering if Slager thought that Scott still had the Taser after that real brief standing struggle and then realized that he didn't have it after shooting him (since what I'm guessing is the object that flopped behind him is the officers taser). So he went and retrieved it and then decided to throw it down by his body.

Or I'm wondering if he thought that Scott had a gun. The video didn't show the beginning of the stop and it's unclear how long they were standing there and if Slager had the opportunity to search him. Plus where are their vehicles? All the reports I've seen referenced that the stop initially started as the result of a broken tail-light in Scott's vehicle.

Then again Slager might have known that Scott didn't have the taser all along and shot him anyway because it pissed him off that he was running.

Lot of 'If's'.

Yeah, definitely hard to tell because of the quality of the footage.

He did pick up whatever the object was, so if it was the taser it would make more sense that if he was trying to plant the taser that he would have just left it there instead off dropping it and then picking it back up. If he did kill him for no other reason other than running I'm surprised that he didn't hop the fence, confiscate the phone and erase it all in the name of 'investigative purposes'.

Some of the media is taking a step back from the certainty that Slager was planting the Taser on Scott's dead body as well.

Slate : Officer Michael Slager Charged With Murder in Death of Walter Scott (*Click for link*)



I've read/heard from multiple media sources that Slager did attempt to use his taser.

Scott also apparently had a warrant out for his arrest related to a minor charge of failure to pay child support.



Found several articles that all basically say the same thing about the taser wires.

SC cop charged with suspect's murder after video surfaces (*Click for link*)



So at one point the officer tried non-lethal force. Since the video starts in the middle of the encounter as a result we don't really know what went on, the officer could have thought that Scott had a gun from his body language or something he said.

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A few years ago as part of a class I watched these two different police dash cam videos of the same exact shooting. From the first cruisers angle it's of several officers all ordering the same man to get down over and over again as he was walking fast through a convenience store parking lot at night. He slows down, appears to start to raise his hands and then out of nowhere and with what appears to be no provocation whatsoever two of the several officers light him up.

From the second cruisers angle (of the man's front with the front of the convenience store in the background) the guy is walking fast and cradling an object in a wadded up t-shirt in the crook of his arm. As the officers start yelling commands at the guy he slows down and puts his elbows up like he's going to comply but uses the motion to dig into the bundle and produces a gun and starts to pivot towards the closest officer when the other two light him up.

I thought it was interesting because if I'd been on some jury and only seen the clip from the first video and the gun had of disappeared somehow (grabbed by a friend in the crowd or whatever) those officers would have looked really guilty.

I'm not saying that this is the case here (for all I know the officer could have shot him merely for running and for that little altercation where Scott slapped the taser out of his hand, that's what it looks like), but I kind of learned my lesson that video clips only give one snapshot in time from one narrow angle.

They can totally lie while still telling the truth.

That probably isn't the case here, I'm just saying innocent until proven guilty. :Shrug

This is the shooting that this kind of reminds me of.



Bodycam reveals the shocking split-second decision a cop made to shoot dead an armed man running away from him at wedding (*Click for link*)





In this case Terence Walker showed up at a wedding to talk to a woman (an ex-girlfriend I believe) that he'd been stalking. Someone called the police and Muskogee police officer Chansey McMillin responded to the parking lot of the chapel.

The Officer gets out there and is pointed in Walkers direction by bystanders. He approaches him, makes contact, goes to search him and Walker bolts. A foot chase ensues and when Walker who's running flat out gets out to the road he drops an object (a pistol) that falls out of his waistband. He runs back to retrieve it, picks it up, either accidentally or on purpose points the gun at the officer for a split second and then continues running away from McMillin at full tilt. When Walker stopped and retrieved the gun and picks it up the cop makes a split second decision to shoot and continues to fire even though Walker is running away from him again at this point.

The shooting is ruled to be justified as he did have a gun and he did point it at the officer even though it was for a split second.

Now in this other case with Slager/Scott could Slager have thought that he was armed and posed a risk?

Or did he know for a fact that Scott was unarmed and decide to shoot him for running?

Are police obligated to wait to shoot until the suspect is facing them or manages to get behind cover? The answer is on that I don't know what their SOP's are.

I don't know the answers to any of this, but the two situations appear somewhat similar in that there was a brief standing verbal exchange, both broke and ran, McMillin hadn't had a chance to search Walker and I don't believe that Slager had a chance to search Scott for weapons, both were Black men shot by White Officers and both were shot while running away.

Even if Scott turned out to be unarmed it doesn't matter according to the law so long as in Slager's mind he poses a legitimate risk, believes that he's armed and where a reasonable person would come to the same conclusion that the officer did. I mean there have been cases where suspects acted like they had a gun, were shot by the officer and then it turned out that there was no gun period and that the suspect was just posturing. In those cases the officer was still justified in shooting them because they truly believed that the suspect was armed and that they the officer was about to be shot if they didn't act.

That's really the only way it could be justified in my mind. I mean that's reaching quite a bit and giving Slager the benefit of the doubt (where perhaps someone might view this as a total slam-dunk of a murder case, which I completely get), but that's the only thing that I can come up with where it could possibly be justified.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the 'Fleeing Felon' laws that were once on the books in 1985 and ruled them Unconstitutional against unarmed, non-dangerous fleeing suspects.

The most well known case was Tennessee v. Garner.

Fleeing Felon Rule And Vehicle Stops - Tennessee v. Garner (*Click for link*)



There appear to be some exceptions (E.G. Such as an unarmed fleeing felon in a vehicle attempting to run over an officer when the officer is in the direct path of the vehicle, where the vehicle is basically the deadly weapon. Or in extreme cases where the suspect has proven themselves to be such a danger to the community that the normal rules don't apply, usually in a mass murder/active shooter situation), but mostly it's non-lethal force only now.

I am curious as to what changed the nature of the stop.

Was it just the warrant out for his arrest for non-payment of child support? Pretty minor to be running from the police, knocking taser guns out of their hands over and what not.

People are known to do stupid shit for reasons that don't make much sense though.



I'm pretty sure non-payment of child support is a misdemeanor. A search for whether the warrant for Scott was a felony or a misdemeanor turned up zilch.

The officer may have felt that worth taking him in for though. Kind of on Scott that he felt the need to resist (knocking the taser out of his hand) and flee such a minor charge. That was stupid, but I'm not okay with him getting shot in the back as a result.


With the exception of a single call the only times I've ever seen police provide first aid to anyone before we've arrived is when another officer is injured or when it involves a kiddo. With kids cops are at their most helpful in regards to first aid. You've probably seen much the same thing, just not really their gig.

Other than with fellow officers or children (everyone usually has a soft spot for kids) in my experience most cops don't feel that first aid is in their 'job description'. The one exception to that was a call we got where we were short handed and a Dallas Sheriffs Deputy helped us out by doing compressions for us, he'd been an EMT before law enforcement and pitched right in. I remember as I was a bit surprised.

You're right in that it would be the right thing to do and give much better PR. However I think in most cases they don't really know what to do, they feel like they already called us and we'll be there soon and it would also require a mental gear switch to providing care and getting on a personal level with patients (sometimes their suspects) rather than investigation, arrest and security.

I was more meaning that it's a stupid charge for Scott to resist arrest and flee on, not that he shouldn't have been arrested for it.

Misdemeanor or not it's still illegal.



See that's the thing, the police wouldn't ever know for a certainty that a felon or even someone committing a misdemeanor is unarmed and not dangerous. They're basically stuck with being very reactive and only upping their response on the Use of Force Continuum one notch at a time unless they feel threatened with lethal force or they're protecting a third party threatened with lethal force and *THEN* they can jump all the way to the end and respond in kind.

They're also doing this in a job where any person they meet in any given day can draw and shoot them in under a second or possibly already has their gun or other weapon in hand if they don't want to go to jail.

It's a court standard put in place so that police didn't have the option to just shoot any thief in the back rather than give chase. I doubt that before 1985 and that USSC decision that the police were just popping thieves, drug dealers or car thieves in the back if they ran, but now it limits when they can shoot.



Well you're being sarcastic to make a point, but on the home invasion/AT-4 guy they'd basically do what they've always done and hold him at gunpoint based on the home invasion warrant and his previous history of violence and then if he made a sudden movement then they'd take that as an obvious threat and go from there.

No one expects officers to have a suicide pact with their job. Well I take that back, it seems like some people do expect that, but I and most other people don't expect officers to have a suicide pact with their job.

That ruling is so stealing a couple hundred bucks worth of something from some store and then running when confronted doesn't turn into a death sentence.

If police are threatened with any sort of violence I fully expect them to keep on upping their level of violence and response to both keep themselves and their partner safe and effect an arrest.

On why minor criminal arrests are beneficial to society it's because career criminals also commit minor crimes as well and an arrest for something small puts them in the system and on paper in some way and eventually after racking up enough arrests they'll be taken off the street. The younger element who commits crimes sometimes eventually gets sick of the hassle and flys straight. There's also 'the broken windows theory' that if you ignore minor offenses, that eventually the area you're trying to police turns into a slum.

Broken Windows Theory (*Click*)

Criminals and gangsters prefer a failed, jacked up neighborhood. People don't often call the police in such a neighborhood, there's a tendency for people in that neighborhood to view talking to the police (even if they're a victim of a crime) as 'ratting', professionals working for the city (everyone from teachers, city workers, police, fire, ems, animal control etc etc) develop a 'Why Bother?' attitude and it's easier for Gangs/career criminals to exert control over that area, make money and make the average people fearful.

I'd agree with you about society growing increasingly deviant, but I'm pretty sure that it's going to get a lot worse.



I completely agree with you, they should.

A 2-3 day course would cover it. Go over why it's beneficial, cover the Good Samaritan law, then go over the assessment and hands on part of it and then cover the security aspect of remaining safe and still doing their primary job while they provided first aid and that would pretty much do it.

The reason why most cops don't usually do any sort of first aid on the people they come into contact with who are injured is somewhat of an ingrained institutionalized attitude. Change that attitude at the police academy level when they first go through and if the Police Chief started using the stick and the carrot approach to punish those who didn't provide first aid when it was completely feasible and safe to do so and to recognize those who did provide that service before Fire or EMS got there and that attitude would probably change.