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 ...
VENDOME. He didn’t intend to kill him?? (insert screaming with laughter face) Police shoot to kill, he shot at him 8 times, in the back. And then did he race to his side, to check on him?? Noooooo. Oh he intended to kill him.
I can’t figure out the reporting myself, but we’ve always got to remember.....these papers and shows all have an agenda to benefit their own bottom line.
Yeah, they gave CPR, that’s why he lay on his stomach the whole time. uh huh.
It was murder. There is no getting around that fact. Get over it.
It’s missing aforethought or lying in wait.
That’s what I’m talking about.
It was committed in the act of his duty.
I’d like to see him charged with whatever maximum there is and if they can get 2nd, I’m completely fine with that.
“And you don’t know that Slager thinks Scott has the taser”
i know what he said immediately over the radio, quote “he grabbed my taser”
at 18 seconds in the vimeo video Slager deploys the taser, Scott uses a sweeping motion and knocks it behind Slager
i can’t see the wires or what they are attached to
that thing on the ground between them, Slager walks right past it when he retrieves the taser
“Yeah, they gave CPR, that’s why he lay on his stomach the whole time. uh huh.”
CPR was about 15 minutes after the video ended. he didn’t need it until then.
“No, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. You’ve made up this entire fantasy of Scott running toward a public place, grabbing guns willy-nilly, carjacking, you name it.”
Scott wants to escape. he can’t run very fast so he needs a car. he has a contact stun taser. now, maybe the jury will find that plausible or maybe not
we will see.
here’s the guy who will be making that pitch.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/10/michael-slager-lawyer-andy-savage_n_7044044.html
Let’s shoot him down in the street, because MAYBE he MIGHT commit a crime? That’s my entire premise, you’ve made up some scenario to justify shooting him in the back, with no reason, that is crazy.
Don’t you mean that he was past needing it by then?
“I thought you meant he had the taser and ran away with it. I can’t see like I used to, but I could see the taser wires in the video that I saw. Also I saw it lying on the ground almost in front of Slager.”
what Slager walked back and picked up is the thing that is bouncing on the ground behind him after he loses hold of the taser
Slager doesn’t just have responsibility for himself, he’s also responsible for people who might be harmed if he lets Scott run.
If Slager can convince the jury that he thought Scott had his taser, that would be a huge step for him.
i think it will depend mostly on how truthful Slager was in his statement. we have a video to check everything he says
now, we are supposed to believe that Slager’s statement was all lies. but that is being leaked from the same place that gave us the CPR fiasco.
for the CPR, the NYT “listened” to the recording but portions of the officer’s statements were leaked to the NYT to put not just Slager, but the whole dept in the worse possible light
let’s just wait and see what Slagers statement really said.
ANYONE........
Has anyone seen, read, heard of what happened to the other person that was in
Scott’s car? I’ve not seen any mention of that person in all these articles, etc.
That person should have been involved to the extent of questioning, etc.
“Let’s shoot him down in the street, because MAYBE he MIGHT commit a crime?”
hey, the Supreme Court Standard for lawful use of deadly force on a fleeing suspect is:
“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”
it’s fancier language but it’s the same idea as “shoot him because he might commit a crime”
“Don’t you mean that he was past needing it by then?”
is this CPR?
they kept checking his pulse to see if his heart was still beating. as long as he was still breathing and still had a heartbeat, he doesn’t need CPR. it would probably be harmful.
CPR is resuscitation, it’s for when the heart stops beating or he stops breathing.
“ANYONE........
Has anyone seen, read, heard of what happened to the other person that was in
Scott’s car?”
i think this is the latest on that guy
http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150410/PC16/150419900
Really? You think that just because he radioed that he started CPR that that proves he did?
5.56mm
Thanks. At least he’s not an unknown and appears to have had
some contact with the police during this event.
it also looks like a gun or revolver to me.
next question— if it were a gun, what would be the value of a gun next to the suspect’s body with only the cop’s prints and dna on it, i wonder.
[speculation on]
perhaps the cop was caught mentally off balance when firing the taser at scott did not entirely subdue scott. after that, the cop seemed to me to be entering into a different procedure— specifically, a procedure for when the suspect threatens the cop with potentially deadly force. that was not appropriate, of course. after that sinks in, perhaps the cop uses yet another procedure, a drop gun. that is not appropriate either (and with another cop and a witness nearby, he might not get away with it either), and at this time the cop finally sees the light and picks up the drop gun.
[speculation off]
i am no expert at all but i personally do not see dropping sunglasses or even a taser next to the suspect as necessarily suspicious. retrieving the taser seems like an ok thing to do. one probably does not want tasers to lie around unattended and potentially fall into the wrong hands. also, as has been remarked before, if a taser firing produces chads, then it becomes pretty obvious to subsequent investigators where the initial struggle was, and the cop moving the taser to the now-apparently-subdued suspect would not seem to accomplish very much in terms of justifying the shoot.
if the explanation were as i have speculated, then an underlying problem then might be lack of training, and specifically, lack of training for using tasers. in this regard, as i have speculated in another thread, there may be a parallel between this case and the fruitvale station bart shooting in which a taser was also peripherally involved.
what is scary is that the second cop apparently (also?) has a compensating CYA/CYBA attitude and procedure.
[CYBA == covering your buddy’s ass]
Beyond that, I agree that the reporting is shoddy. But we have been seeing shoddy reporting for decades on FR. This just adds to the mix, Rashomon style. Hopefully we on FR have our MSM blinders off.
It is interesting that the witness also has a compensating procedure. He (1) started filming well before the fatal shots were taken; (2) provided generally accurate contemporaneous commentary; and (3) deliberately delayed providing the damning evidence to police, waiting for what in hindsight now appears to be the beginning of what would otherwise become the inevitable police coverup procedure.
in a word, it is all about procedures (good, bad, and ugly).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.