Turned on the news and saw the video of Walter Scott being murdered.
The fuck.
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Clarissa's Blog 
The cop said he was in foot pursuit. Hell, he didn’t even move. Just drew his gun and shot the guy in the back.
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Fuck. He even picks up the taser and moves it to the body, to make it seem like Scott stole it.
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I saw the police chief stand up in front of the media and acknowledge the officer’s responsibility. It was reported that the officer’s lawyer quit after seeing the video.
The interesting question is just how common this kind of behavior is with cops. Has this been happening all along, and its only with the proliferation of cameras that we’re getting to see how bad it is?
If so, can you trust anyone wearing a badge? How could you know?
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That’s the scary thing. Imagine how much of this goes on when nobody’s around to film it.
Though, even when cops are caught on film it’s not like they get convicted.
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“Though, even when cops are caught on film it’s not like they get convicted.”
-I don’t know, the evidence against this guy is pretty damning. I don’t know about the article you’ve got there, but in the video it’s super clear that Scott was a good ten, twenty feet away before the first shot was fired.
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Don’t underestimate the extreme benefit of the doubt police officers get.
Eric Garner’s death was caught on camera; the officer wasn’t even charged.
Four police officers were filmed beating Rodney King; they were acquitted.
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Slager’s been arrested, though. His actions were publicly shut down as inexcusable by the mayor of North Charleston and the governor. His lawyer publicly stated that he was dropping Slager as a client. This is a step.
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@Pen:
And the man is going to find another lawyer.
Getting arrested is one thing; being indicted and convicted is another.
Like many places, South Carolina has very many racist people, some of whom are prosecutors and some of whom end up on juries.
I hate saying this and I hate the idea that someone who so obviously murdered has a great chance of walking free, but it’s happened too many times to be a coincidence.
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The really scary issue, though, is what would have happened if there weren’t a video.
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Agreed.
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@Clarissa
They would have just accepted the police officer’s view, no charges would be filed, and only his family and friends would have a problem with it. The system would collectively shrug. If he’s charged, it won’t be the fact he shot a man on video in the back 8 times; it’ll be because of the evidence tampering.
Jury nullification happened all the time before the Civil Rights movement and I suspect it still happens. The guy who caught Walter Scott’s murder on tape is in great danger. At the very least I hope he’s lawyered up and has no outstanding warrants or criminal record. Look at what’s happening to Ramsey Orta.
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“They would have just accepted the police officer’s view, no charges would be filed, and only his family and friends would have a problem with it. The system would collectively shrug.”
And yes, you are right, Scott’s killer might yet go free and become rich as a result of the massive donations he will surely get from supporters. We will now hear how Walter Scott was “not an angel.” I’m hearing there were some child support payments he might have avoided paying. And I’m sure he misbehaved in school 40 years ago. And maybe even peed himself at the age of 2.
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You can’t. That’s the scary thing. It feels like 1984.
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Not being American, I assumed you meant the author and had a very confused “he’s been dead a while/I didn’t know someone killed him/hang on no video then anyway/the whaups are crying” before I realised there’s probably more than one Walter Scott in the world….
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Yeah yeah yeah. And when the facts come out your latest martyred saint will turn out to have:
– an IQ less than 85
– a rap sheet a mile long
Yaknow… If your vibrants would actually put their hands up and say – ” Don’t shoot!” they probably wouldn’t get shot! Funny how you liberal idiots always leave out how these vibrants ‘scuffle’ with the cops before getting shot.
So ‘ the fuck’ about this, my clueless liberal lady – is that a vibrant felon has been shot, a rabid cop is getting taken off the job, and Darwin has carried the day!
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The filthy Glenfilthie has been banned. I apologize profusely for not doing that sooner. My bad.
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“And the man is going to find another lawyer.”
As he should. Every defendent is entitled to an attorney. I don’t think it will help him.
Probably the smartest thing he could do is to plead guilty (perhaps with some kind of plea deal).
If he does go to trial and no exculpatory evidence is found (and I can’t imagine there could be any). Then I hope he fries (or gets life).
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I agree. But the informal rules are different for cops, in a way they aren’t for ordinary citizens without great wealth or power.
Most likely another lawyer will not help him stay out of jail. But a really good one could get him a minimal sentence; an extraordinary one might get him off.
I remember a case where some defendants had videotaped themselves raping an unconscious girl. They stubbed some cigarettes out on her. Now, amazingly, the defendants were all acquitted because the defense got the jury to believe(or the jury wanted to believe, same difference) she was making a porn video.
It’s not the killing on tape which will get him jail time it will be that he’s covering up evidence, if anything. And that’s not counting on the abilities of the prosecutor (whoops s/he might decide to suck) or the prejudices of a jury.
In a just world, the cop would get the stiffest sentence for the killing and the evidence coverup. In a just world, this wouldn’t have happened at all.
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“It’s not the killing on tape which will get him jail time it will be that he’s covering up evidence, if anything. ”
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Cliff’s right. This won’t go to trial.
(1) The cop will want to be segregated from other prisoners for his own safety; that’s his motivation for a deal.
(2) There’s no defense. Initially the cop claimed to be following procedures. The chief has trashed that. The radio transmissions and video preclude insanity.
(3) The department won’t want the cop testifying that he was only doing what others in the department have done. That’s the prosecutorial incentive for a deal.
Bottom line: none of the parties involved (except the victim’s parents, perhaps) want this to go to a public trial. The cop will get jail. He won’t get the death penalty.
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I also think that entering a guilty verdict in return for a deal is the best way for him to go. But it’s not like we are talking about a reasonable person here.
I also saw on the news last night about the trial of a fellow called Aaron Hernandez. He also seems to be counting on a not guilty verdict which, to me, is bizarre.
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On the cop: according to ABC News this evening, there are two other cases involving the same cop that are not going to be reopened. On Hernandez: That case boggles the mind. Hernandez’s behavior comes across as a combination of arrogance to the point of irrationality. What he continues to miss is that under NJ law, he doesn’t have to be proven to be the trigger-puller to be found guilty. That case is worth its own comedy thread.
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(1) I thought even convicted cops got that as a matter of course.
As to (2) and (3), that depends. Are they trying to make it go away, or does the prosecution feel like they need to make an example of him? If they’re trying to make it go away, they’ll offer lesser charges and he’d be smart to take it. What could they offer him though? If they’re trying to make an example of him and charge him with first degree murder and evidence tampering, he might choose to roll the dice with a trial.
On one hand, having it go to trial establishes a separation between good and bad cops, and since the guy was on camera, the prosecution can spin it as “he’s a bad cop who was caught on tape and is lying to save his own skin.” Plus, the city might see protests if the guy gets a plea deal for second degree murder. On the other hand, the police union might not be thrilled and the prosecutor needs the police for other cases. Has the union formally disavowed the cop? That’s key.
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First, we’re dealing with the South, and unions there are either virtually nonexistent or quite weak. My take looking at the sour faces of the cops standing behind the chief at the press conference is: this guy’s dug himself into a big hole and nobody wants to take any risk to save him. That being said, southerners have overcrowded prisons and are big on saving face. No one will want this story to hang around; they will want a quick resolution that will avoid protests and then for this guy to disappear into the prison system and out of the media.
If they handle it the way I’ve seen it done, the family will be involved in the plea deal and there will be a press conference featuring the family and the chief announcing that justice has been done. (The Ferguson guys weren’t smart enough to pull this off, this chief is.)
The chief said he treats his officers as if they were his kids, so they’ll get a big lecture on using their heads and not embarrassing him.
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I agree almost entirely.
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Why is it SOP for first degree relatives or spouses to go on tv and proclaim their relative is a “good person” or “not racist” or is a “nice person in their heart” when irrefutable proof exists (video/whatever) that they’re manifestly not?
Why isn’t it enough for them to be like, “I stand by my relative because I love this person” if anything and not comment further because who knows if you’re digging another hole for yourself or notorious relative? Am I missing something? How does airing your denial in public actually help that relative?
Because every time it happens, I just think “Fuck you. You’re part of the problem.”
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Yeah, like the parents of those men from Oklahoma who rolled out the usual “some of my best friends are” story. It just made it worse for me.
But the problem is that they are not seeing it.
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But I also have to confess that I’m envious of people who have the kind of mother that wants to defend them even in the face of horrible criminal charges. It must be nice to be so loved.
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I understand. I never had that level of support. However, the mother refused to look at the video. She has refused to see it or deal with it. That’s also a problem.
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You can go to the trial, put up your house for bail, help fund their lawyer, visit them in jail, without doing that. This is all real, tangible actions. I think this kind of statement where they start talking about how noble/good/kind/not racist/whatever is more about saving face than love. Hick’s wife immediately announced she was divorcing him and then proceeded to talk about how not racist he was.
I see the same kinds of statements a month afterward (when they’ve hired PR reps) as well as within two days so it’s not just shock.
I could never see my mother engaging in that kind of public denial for me. Not with video. She’d disown me. At best, I’d have representation and she’d never talk to me again. I have been a constant injury to her face and this isn’t something she could tolerate.
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I’m so sorry. This is very very sad. 😦
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Actually, there’s another way to look at the racism issue. Do we know in fact that the cop would not have done this to someone he deemed to be white trash? Maybe he has. Also, the victim was driving a Mercedes. Did that antagonize the cop?
In all honesty, I don’t know if this cop is on a power trip, or if he’s racist, or if he hates people who are better off than he is, or some combination of all of these. That may matter from a prevention POV, but the cop is a murderer and a liar. Whatever the ultimate motive, that doesn’t change.
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The visual of seeing a black person run a way from a white cop who was shooting fast and obviously to kills was in itself extraordinarily disturbing. And it happened so soon after Rice, Brown, Garner that the image became even more potent. It’s truly impossible to gauge what this particular cop was feeling at that moment and whether he was reacting to black skin. However, just having so many of these murders happen in such a short stretch of time in a country where black people are what? under 15% of the population? – all of this just screams for a question to be asked: is this about race?
Even my classroom always breaks up into black people on one side, white people on another side and Hispanics in the middle. And unless I make efforts every day to desegregate, there is nothing to break up that process on its own.
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Do we know in fact that the cop would not have done this to someone he deemed to be white trash? Maybe he has. Also, the victim was driving a Mercedes. Did that antagonize the cop?
These are not serious questions. The police are often “white trash” or blue collar themselves; this is South Carolina (first to secede from the Union), and if you’re a poor white person driving a nice car, you’ve “made it.” The city is plurality black, the police force is 80% white, and they can’t afford to alienate poor whites AND the black population. Could he have done that to white trash? Possibly, but it’s EXTREMELY unlikely.
There’s a very popular meme going around contrasting what Eric Garner/Trayvon Martin/etc were doing (“loosy cigarettes/nothing) to the younger Tzaernaev/Aurora shooter/etc (murderous rampages with bombs and automatic weapons) and the fact that the former all were killed and the latter were taken in alive and got trials.
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Based on my own experience, I respectfully disagree. There are cops who are “equal opportunity thugs” when they think they can get away with it and poor white will simply take the abuse without saying anything — perhaps because they feel the cop is entitled to be abusive.
I’m not denying the issue of racial bigotry in any way. What I am saying is that, in this case, there are other explanations that seem to fit the data.
On the meme comment: the difference in result has something to do with the department and region involved, and pure dumb luck. The younger Tzaernaev was hiding in a boat that became so full of bullet holes it had to be scrapped. The shooters couldn’t see him so they riddled the hull.
The collective experience shows that the grand jury system is bogus and should be scrapped wherever it is still in use.
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No sooner than I post this, than this video arises showing deputies in California kicking a white guy who has already surrendered (on the ground, hands behind back). Racism isn’t a requirement for being a thug/idiot.
http://news.yahoo.com/video-shows-california-deputies-beating-man-fleeing-horse-083328080.html
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Vic — when did you give the “how to behave when a cop stops you” to any younger relatives. When did you receive it? What was the slant of the talk ? I’m curious.
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I certainly discussed with my son back when he was getting his license (around 15 years ago). Frankly, I had no contact with cops when I was growing up, just never saw them. “You don’t need them; they don’t need you.” I made some friends who were cops in college, and got to see both how good and how screwed up they can be. My experiences with them here in Jersey have not been positive, and frankly, my stomach turns whenever I see them. I also have very careful how I act when they are around. (And yes, I’m white.)
Part of that’s due to the violent environment, part of that is due to the specific area in which I live.
I’m grateful that my father — in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer’s — can’t understand what’s happening. He had his trouble back in the day — he worked as an adviser to Ralph Abernathy and got shot at for his contribution — but he would be in absolute despair to see where things have fallen.
I really don’t understand why people so firmly resist the idea that economics, not race, is the fundamental dimension of discrimination. Within an economic strata, people have more shared experiences than they want to admit.
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Great comment! I’m writing a post in response.
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In addition to what Vic wrote, it’s important to remember that police are trained that they are supposed to be in charge of any interaction, any person that challenges that perception does so at great risk.
When a person challenges a police officer physically they are threatening that perception and the instincts drilled into the police officer are to retake control as quickly as possible.
If you want to challenge something a police officer has said or seems to think then do so as non-threateningly as possible, hopefully in a way that they can take credit for.
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Shakti — the slant of the talk? Move slowly, keep hands in open, if going to do something, tell cop what you are about to do, be respectful, be sincere.
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