Posted on 04/10/2015 12:46:41 AM PDT by rickyrikardo
Authorities in South Carolina have released dash cam video in connection with the fatal shooting of Walter Scott, but the footage does not show the actual shooting.
Video from the patrol car of North Charleston's Michael Slager shows an initial traffic stop and early interactions between the officer and Scott.
Slager approaches Scott's vehicle. The two men speak. Scott tells the officer he does not have insurance and is in the process of purchasing the vehicle. Slager then returns to his patrol car.
Scott exits his vehicle, briefly, and Slager tells him to stay in the car. Scott then gets out of the car, again, and runs away, out of the range of the dash cam.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Understood. But I did watch the video - all of it and to me there is no need for a back-story unless this guy had just butchered somebody and was fleeing with a machete in his hand off to butcher some more people. It was murder. Premeditated.
At least the ones that hit him. The ones that missed...hey, on the house!
If the guy turned out to be the Beltway Sniper and he let him go, we would be kicked his azz right now. But it could explained away.
He was clearly criminally wrong to shoot him but withholding information about the victim in order to avoid discoloring him is wrong too.
The narrative is about a white cop killing a black person for no reason other than racism. The reality is that a government agent gunned down a private citizen for failing to obey.
That is gonna be crazy hard to prove.
There have been so many conclusions jumped to in this story, and I have hardly followed it. I have heard that he planted evidence by moving what they think is the taser. This looked like a park or something. If the guy ended up 50 feet away, the cop should secure his taser (or back-up gun) and not leave it laying around, unless the scene was secure (which it wasnt).
I don't see how this was a justified shooting, but there is a lot I don't know. We know we already had a chase, I have no idea how long that went on. Then a physical confrontation. Again, we don't know any details, but we do have video of the last seconds of some sort of confrontation - a fight? an argument?
A lot we don't know yet.
I haven’t spoken to a single cop (I have some in the family) who believes this shooting was in any way justified. He wasn’t running from a crime, they had already checked and found that all he had was just a warrant on him for failure to pay child support and, while he had a record of minor (mostly traffic related) arrests, he was certainly not “America’s most wanted.” Even if he had been, cops are trained not to shoot when the person is running away unless he somehow presents an immediate threat to them or somebody else (he’s armed and turning around to shoot at them, for example).
This cop violated his training and even elementary common sense, and a perhaps somewhat dysfunctional but harmless person is dead now.
Hard to prove.....yep, probably, but if I were on a jury, one viewing of that video and the deliberate care I saw of an unheated pursuit and 8 cold shots in a clear aiming stance would tell me it was. He’s lucky I won’t be on his jury.
I agree with you even though I also understand he was driving a stolen car.
I don’t have anything other than a difference in color right now to say ‘racism’. I really don’t think it is that, though.
To me, it is power coupled with a very obvious psychological problem we have as a society in choosing those people to uphold and enforce our laws.
Clearly, a mistake was made in hiring this one.
They just might shoot you in the back
Yes, if they have no clue how to do their job.
If this ass clown turned out to be a mass murderer instead of a regular gibsmedat lowlife, the cop would be a hero.
Irrelevant in this situation. The victim was not a mass murderer.
Second degree murder - maybe...I don't know the law all that well.
Second-degree murder is ordinarily defined as: 1) an intentional killing that is not premeditated or planned, nor committed in a reasonable "heat of passion"; or 2) a killing caused by dangerous conduct and the offender's obvious lack of concern for human life.
After even a brief foot chase (I don't know how far the chase went), I know the adrenalin would be pumping...and a cop, chasing a runner, there has to be a heightened sense of 'what is this guy gonna do'. I know they are trained for that situation, but many probably don't see if very often. I could see it falling to 'voluntary manslaughter'. But, like I said, I am not that well versed in the applicable laws.
Did you watch that video? I don’t care about legal definitions, really. I saw what I saw and if I were on a jury where he was charged with premeditated murder, I’d vote to convict. He wasn’t so far into “heat of pursuit” and the “chase” to not get 5 out of 8 shots (from accounts on it) on target from a good distance.
I am not going to buy it. Convict him and put him away forever. We have no legitimate need for him in our society.
From Wiki:
Premeditated murder is the crime of wrongfully and intentionally causing the death of another human being (also known as murder) after rationally considering the timing or method of doing so, in order to either increase the likelihood of success, or to evade detection or apprehension.
If the charge were premeditated murder...and you and I were on the jury...It would not be unanimous.
From what I have seen, it is without excuse, not a good decision...tragic...But not premeditated murder, maybe murder in the second degree...
The buddy in the passenger seat should be able to enlighten us all on why he ran.
And he was in a car that was not his.
Hey! Stop doing that. Most Freepers here do not need anymore evidence than the first video clip. Actual evidence? Be damned.
The police don’t share your view, once they saw the video, it went from routine, to them filing murder charges against him.
The standard for analyzing this type of event involves determining what the officer knew at the time, and what a reasonable officer would do in that event. What Slager knew at the time he started to pursue Scott was that he had a guy who was driving a car that wasn’t his and who ran when Slager started to run his license. What he knew at the time of the shooting was that guy had also attacked him.
He had no warrant information at that time, and he had no assurance the license was real. If you want to reach a realistic understanding of the event, you have to determine what the state of the officer’s knowledge was at the instant it occurred, not what was subsequently learned.
The same flaw in logic keeps coming up when an officer shoots someone holding a realistic looking squirt gun. You hear the following, “but it was just a squirt gun”, “but the officer couldn’t tell it was a squirt gun”, “but it was just a squirt gun”... and around and around. You’ll find your ability to predict the outcome of cases like this is vastly improved if you confine yourself to what was known at the time. That’ll be the standard, the rest of it’s of interest in appreciating the irony or sadness of the event, but it doesn’t put you in Slager’s place at that instant.
True. Still gotta chase the guy behind the wheel, though, if the car’s stolen he’s the only one who can be convicted.
I have served on a juries for murder, assault, drug dealing, and domestic abuse trials and sent people away for decades in some cases and am a strong supporter of law and order. Was running stupid absolutely and there may have been a fight at some point we don’t know yet. But NOTHING this officer could say or show me would not keep me from finding him guilty of murder in this case. The video is damning, this cop murdered that man.
He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and punished even if it means the death penalty which I suspect would be off the table as I do not know the intricacies of South Carolina law where murder is concerned.
He had no warrant information at that time
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You may want to check the fact on this one. I think that at the time of the shooting, the cop did know that there was an outstanding warrant for non payment of child support.
I am not up on all the latest perhaps, but driving a car that is not yours is not the same as driving a stolen car. Is there any information at present that the car was stolen?
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