Posted on 04/10/2015 10:12:14 PM PDT by Olog-hai
Dashboard video shows a police officer making a routine traffic stop. Cellphone video shows the officer shooting the fleeing motorist in the back. What remains a mystery is what happened during the minutes in between that led the police officer to become a killer.
The dash cam footage released by state police on Thursday showed North Charleston Officer Michael Thomas Slager pulling over black motorist Walter Scott for a broken brake light last weekend. Slager, who is white, has been charged with murder in Scott’s death. […]
What’s missing is what happens from the time the two men run out of the frame of dashboard video to the time picked up in a bystander’s cellphone video a few hundred yards away. The cellphone footage starts with Scott getting to his feet and running away, then Slager firing eight shots at the man’s back. “It is possible for something to happen in that gap to significantly raise the officer’s perception of risk,” said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Scott was more than $17,500 behind in child support—more than $18,000 with court fees—and had been in jail three times over the issue. He last paid child support in 2012, court records show, and a bench warrant for his arrest was issued in early 2013. His family has said that he might have run because he was behind on payments again and didn’t want to go back to jail. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
With witnesses to the effect that there was a struggle on the ground and a good Lawyer telling the jury that adrenaline clouded the officers judgement, it will go down as manslaughter. I don’t necessarily disagree. Sharpton might as well get a headstart start on the riots.
What you list here is all in the escalation of the incident. It started out as a traffic stop. What was he being arrested for, now? Child support? He was in the act of fleeing when he was killed. I’m of the opinion that only violent people should be arrested. How is someone going to pay child support if they’re in jail?
There was another dashcam video released today that shows another police car arriving at the scene. It doesn't show much, but does give perspective of where the stop was in relation to the shooting. A fairly small area, it wasn't much of a chase.
The first think I noticed about the Merecedes is that both brake lights seemed to work fine.
“So the solution is to start launching bullets in the direction of those retail businesses? Take out a shopper with a stray bullet or two?”
i agree it’s a risk. but if you let him get into the parking, and then try to stop him when he carjacks a family in their car, that’s more risky.
“A seminal 1985 Supreme Court case, Tennessee vs. Garner, held that the police may not shoot at a fleeing person unless the officer reasonably believes that the individual poses a significant physical danger to the officer or others in the community.”
so that’s what the standard is. i read a lot of lawyers blogs and comment sites yesterday, and it was divided. some quite liberal ones argued that juries give wide latitude to police and they could easily see an acquittal. others said no way.
Sounds like you’re trying to defend the indefensible....
Yep - these days it seems as if some cops shoot perps for the "convenience" of it rather than a real need.
Too many cops seem to not be mentally fit enough for the job - they exhibit a thug's "don't you dare dis me" mentality and do not belong in a profession where deadly force is sometimes needed. Those types will want to "earn their stripes" by killing someone and many are sadists who have trouble holding themselves in check.
Just as battered women gravitate to social actions type jobs, thugs who want to hurt people gravitate towards cop jobs.
i posted a picture of a police taser in 24. there are two models, that’s the small one. i agree that that thing that went behind his feet looked smaller than that.
i agree about moving stuff around at a crime scene. however, if there’s one officer at a crime scene, and he leaves a pistol or a taser far away from the gunshot victim... is that better or worse...
the witnesses to the struggle on the ground is really important to Slager, as the more they can portray Scott as acting really violent and dangerous, the easier it will be to argue that Scott posed a significant physical danger to the officer or others.
the grab for the taser helps too. shows he was willing to commit a violent assault in order to steal weapons.
one other strange thing about this case, Scott was tasered twice and it had absolutely no effect. his toxicology report may prove interesting.
i’m not a lawyer, but a i understand the law, it’s his propensity to commit series physical harm, not the reason for the traffic stop that matters.
im not a lawyer, but i read a lot of law blogs yesterday. and some quite liberal lawyers made the argument that juries allow wide latitude to police officers on deadly force issues. (they’re liberal so they didn’t like it).
the standard is serious risk of physical harm. and they are going to try to portray
Scott as posing that risk.
Oh of COURSE they do! Yeah, we all believe that too.
I am thinking 2nd degree murder. I took a look at SC laws, to me it looked like that might be it.
Oh, should have waited and read your post. I just said the same thing. Oh how smart you are, you agree with me!!!! LOL
i want Slager to have due process and i want his case to be decided on the facts and the law, not on mob opinion.
i refuse to accept nonsense like the “planted’ taser, when anyone who looks at that video can see it’s not a taser. we’re at the point where Slager is judged to be so evil and wicked that he must be found guilty regardless of the facts.
well maybe on Free Republic some have bought into the idea that:
If the narrative is right, the facts don’t matter.
but i’m not up for that.
Not only do I think it looks like a taser, it also looks like he walked up and screamed for the unconscious/dead man to put his hands behind his back, several times, quite loudly. You know, for theater.
Wow, that is SUCH a stretch!! You forgot to add that Slager believed that Scott was running to get a gun hidden in a tree and he had to stop him before he reached a tree. Or he was running off to rob a bank, so he was really shooting at a bank robber.
wow, I didn’t know you knew what was in Slager’s mind!! You are astounding! Can you tell what’s in my mind right now? Umm hmmm.
Sad to burst your bubble ,but the taser wires show up as Scott starts to run and then they disconnect and fall to the ground, as the taser has as well. It’s in that video. And this happened in front of your friend and fellow, Slager, the one you know what he’s thinking, and what he knows and doesn’t know.
So don’t tell me that he doesn’t know Scott doesn’t have the taser. It’s right in front of him too, within his peripheral vision. He doesn’t look around, he goes right back to it, picks it up and carries it over to the body.
Ask Reverend Wright. He knows what Slager was thinking! He’s got an inside track on this.
“if Slager is planting evidence, what about fingerprints?
If he wasn’t planting evidence then why take the trouble to retrieve it and drop it by the body?”
but what is the “it”? anyone who looks at that video can see it’s not a taser.
FWIW i think it’s sunglasses, and i think they were Scott’s and he dropped them during the fight, and Slager picked them up when he retrieved the taser (but you can’t see, trees are blocking.
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