Is there any evidence that supports that misidentification claim? Other than the word of the misidentified man, and his lawyer? Wasn’t the misidentified man the brother of the suspect? I was under the impression that the girlfriend (who filed the original complaint) told police where to find the suspect and later said police had the wrong man?
So he shot him, just in case? Are you serious? Do you really believe cops are allowed to shoot people in the back while they’re running away just on the off chance that they might be armed?
I don’t understand how anyone can hold cops to such a low standard… and somehow that low standard just happens to harm black people the most.
I don’t know how in the world he was supposed to know that Scott was unarmed, do you?
I also don’t know what lay in Scott’s path as he fled, giving all appearances of being a desperate criminal willing to do anything to avoid capture. Was there a stoplight where he might have tried carjacking someone to get away? Was there a school or a neighborhood of houses where he might have tried to take hostages? Etc., etc.
We don’t know, therefore we don’t know what was going through the mind of this officer who was undoubtedly aware of all sorts of terrible things that have been done by fleeing felons.
Michael Slager’s pregnant wife and mother visited him in jail.
This tragedy rips apart so many lives. Scott is dead, his kids don’t have a dad anymore. Slager’s baby is due in another month and may never know his dad (outside of prison visits). All the other family members of both men will never forget what happened.
It’s terrible that a guy worried about possible warrants for back child support set this chain of events into motion. It’s not a defense for Slager, but it is what triggered the tragedy.
They certainly were, and I fell for it too. I’ve pretty much done a 180 now after seeing the video from the dashboard cam and learning more about how Slager tried to apprehend Scott prior to the shooting. I still don’t know that I’d say the shooting was justified but I can see how Slager may well have had concerns for public safety that led him to shoot, rather than just blatantly mowing down a black guy for the hell of it like the version the media fed us in the beginning would have us believe.
This just in! (Maybe.)
I just saw a headline a few minutes ago, saying that another dashcam video has turned up. The link went to a page, apparently with videos of TV news reports, but I can’t watch videos on this machine. Now I can’t find the headline again, and I’m not seeing any obvious Google references to a second video.
Did anyone else here see or read about this?
The second dashcam video
What “triggered” the tragedy was Slager deciding to pull the trigger eight times at a fleeing man who posed no immediate threat to anyone. Any sins of Scott are miniscule in comparison to this.
There’s a street view map of the scene in this article.
The shooting took place quite a distance from the traffic stop in the parking lot. Scott ran pretty far before Slager resorted to shooting.
To justify deadly force the officer has to know that the individual poses a clear threat to public safety. If the officer doesn’t know if the fleeing suspect is armed, then he doesn’t meet that standard.
Slager made the decision to commit murder there, as opposed to over there.
Sadly, it just does not seem that Slager is made of the right stuff to be a LEO. Got emotional and pulled the trigger.
If I confronted a burglar In my house and struggled with him and shot him while he was trying to run away, well, things would not go too good for me. Pretty grey area though. But if he was in the yard, and I shot him in the back while he was running away. Well, umm. no. Texas is a little different I know.
The big problem here is the tampering of evidence. The movement of the stun gun. If really puts a large ? on what happened. And that it was so casual, and accepted by the other cop that saw it is just nuts.
And in the vid, the dying man laying face down is handcuffed, and Slager didn’t even then do a cursory check for a weapon. If he thought he was armed, he would have.
This bears repeating. A lot.
Fwiw, you have to think a local jury will convict on Manslaughter (reckless) rather than Murder (a clear intention to kill).
Imo, he just has to say he believed it was in the interests of the public he stopped the guy from escaping, and that he did not intend to kill him. Local jury will surely buy that, esp. given the first dashcam video.
I would have thought it warranted a criminal charge of obstruction of justice, or however evidence tampering is described in South Carolina law.
I dunno - prudent person would,
But it’s not a stretch for me at all to believe that he saw no need to check a man handcuffed facedown for a weapon
Remember, a jury of HIS peers will elect to recommend his promotion to Lieutenant.
The State Attorney can add, or subtract, charges up until the time jury selection begins. There was no imminent danger when lethal force was used. I’m thinking manslaughter will be the primary charge. Obstruction will also, probably, make the list. IMHO, of course.
They didn’t have much of a dad before he was dead, either.
Regards,
Shodan
Weird. Sure, maybe he was a crappy dad (maybe it’s even better than 50/50 that he was, depending on the evidence), but I’ve always assumed that the possibility that I might be slandering a dead person who didn’t deserve to die would outweigh any positives gained by insulting the dead.
Maybe you’re right – but is this possibility worth the chance that you’re unjustly insulting the memory of a dead man and his family?