So, the black man had taken his taser away from him and was attacking him. So in self defense, the cop was forced, forced I say, to empty 8 bullets into that vicious black savage.
Except… uhm… 50-year-old Walter L. Scott didn’t have Patrolman Michael Slager’s taser. The video shows Patrolman Slager jogging back 20 yards to where he’d dropped the taser in order to grab it and then plant it on Scott’s body. Furthermore, the video shows that Scott was at least 15 yards away from Slager and running away as fast as he could when Slager cold-bloodedly shot Scott in the back.
Note that the law is that police officers are not allowed to shoot suspects that are running away unless suspects are armed and dangerous. This has been the law laid down by the Supremes since 1985. And the video shows that Scott was no armed and dangerous criminal, he was a guy busted for a broken tail light who wasn’t interested in being arrested for his back child support and who had taken off running about as fast as a 50 year old dude can run, which isn’t all that fast but hey, us 50 year old dudes ain’t as young as we used to be. And a cop who was almost half Scott’s age couldn’t keep up with Scott and had to shoot him 8 times in the back in self defense? For realz?
The sad thing is that if it wasn’t for this video showing Slager shooting an unarmed man in the back and then planting a weapon on the man, Slager would have gotten away with it. Like hundreds of other cops all over the country have gotten away with it. Without the video, it would have been suspicious that Scott was shot in the back, sure, but hey, “I thought I saw a gun and he started to turn towards me.” That’s what they always say, right?
Same old, same old, in other words. Pretty much the same as the usual back forty years ago, when my cop neighbor was regaling me of tales of righteous shoots and how he got his throw-downs. He got his throw-downs by rousting parolees that he was pretty sure had weapons, he’d take the gun off of them and then tell the parolee that it was his lucky day because he didn’t want to do the paperwork to take the parolee back in on a weapons charge, but don’t let me catch you with a gun again, yada yada, then walk off with the weapon. Thing is, things had changed for a while there. Things got cleaned up. We had “community policing”. Cops would come out to protests and sing Kumbaya with the protesters, and then everybody would go home happy. And peace and joy spread throughout the land.
What happened? I mark the real turning point as November 1999. That was when our lords and masters met in Seattle at a WTO gathering in order to sell out the nations of the world to the highest bidder. Irate Americans of all sorts turned out to protest that they didn’t want their jobs going overseas on the altar of “free trade”.
And our lords and masters freaked out, and sicced every cop they could find onto the protesters in scenes reminiscent of 1968 Chicago DNC, and in fear of the population decided to stock up our police forces with cops who had no compunctions about beating and shooting unarmed people.
And they have succeeded.
Nice police state we have here, y’all. Hope you like it.
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
And since the WTO debacle in Seattle — once my favorite city? I can count on my fingers how often I’ve been TO the city, and not yet run out of fingers. Because, yeah, police state behaviors make me want to stay AWAY.
We watched the video of the latest cop on black killing last night, it still makes us go “WTF is WRONG with those guys?” At least this time, the cop IS charged with murder.
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And yet, despite all that, despite the video clearly showing the cop gunning down a man in cold blood and planting a weapon on him, we still ask the question “will he be convicted?” Because, America. Yup.
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Yeah, my mind is shying away from that particular bit — ok, being DRAGGED away — because I feel my mind totter a bit worse EVERY time this happens. And yes, WTF?
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[…] is not sufficient rudeness or outrage that this KEEPS happening in this country. If the cop planted evidence to justify his homicide in this case, how many times has that gone on […]
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Tux, your example of the top .1% to 1% hiring and controlling the police/thugs/collectors/security requires the occasional sacrifice to work. This office will be that sacrifice…but will he be enough? Once the prols realize they’ve been hoodwinked, the upheaval will make other historical events look minor. The bitch of it is those who “prep” will be targets as obvious 1%ers (they aren’t, but being prepared will annoy people almost as much as being rich) along with those in gated communities and those driving German cars (guilt by association).
The really fun bit will be if the “security” forces catch on to their role (sacrificial victims and cannon fodder) and decide they want theirs.
Now, this is all based upon America continuing down it’s current trajectory rather than a course correction. I still believe the change is possible, probable is another matter.
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The really fun bit will be if the “security” forces catch on to their role (sacrificial victims and cannon fodder) and decide they want theirs.
That’s the end game of a police state, clearly visible in Russia — once you (the oligarchs) set up a police state, sooner or later your hired goons decide to cut out the middle man. A secret policeman (Vladimir Putin) is now the wealthiest man in Europe. But our oligarchs are stupid. 3/4ths of them were born on 3rd base and think they hit a triple — they’re winners of the lucky sperm club, not the brains club. Paris Hilton is a typical member of our oligarchical class. Just sayin’.
– Badtux the History Penguin
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This was big news on the TV in Australia last night. Even one of the patients in the locked part of the psych ward where I was working (an ASPD heroin addict who was raging and screaming for a solid week before the doctors gave up on conventional treatment and ordered a couple weeks of electroshock, which made him MUCH better, although he’ll always be schizophrenic) was flabbergasted. I told him (and anybody else who would listen) that the United States is a police state. And despite of what the TV newsreaders solemnly intoned about how “the policeman could face the death penalty,” in a jury trial, all it takes is one racist, police-worshipping holdout for the cop to walk free.
How many people have read “Bonfire of the Vanities” by Tom Wolfe? One of the underlying themes in it was how the truth of a situation can get totally twisted when the media spotlight hits it full-on. The driving force of the story becomes about trivialities, not reality. We saw that with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Did Walter Scott ever hit his wife, get busted for anything or write stupid shit on the Internet? Does Michael Slager have any black friends or relatives by marriage, because he CAN’T be rayciss if that’s the case! Was he throwing down the Taser, or just keeping it safe from falling into the hands of small children before coming over to selflessly perform CPR on the man who he had just ventilated? Will the prosecutor sandbag the grand jury proceedings the way that one in Ferguson did, or will he allow a ringer to get onto the jury so a mistrial is guaranteed? It’s South Carolina, so the government officials who make the decisions about how events roll out will be right-wing authoritarians. They can tweak the trajectory in tiny ways behind the scene that ensure it goes askew from how you or I would want it to proceed. There are many ways to pervert the course of justice in Amerika’s (or any country’s) Injustice System when The Powerful want to protect their gunservants. It will be interesting to watch how the pro-pig backlash develops in the coming weeks.
The Primary Rule for Survival in Sovok Amerikkka is “Do whatever the man with the government-issued gun says or you will die.” Screw Supreme Court decisions. To paraphrase Stalin, “How many divisions has the Supreme Court?” The law of the land does not matter to an angry man with a gun in his hand. When I rant about this to patients and co-workers, I sound like a paranoid schizo. One of these days they’re going to wrestle me to the floor and inject me.
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Indeed, all it takes is for the prosecutor to *not* use one of his challenge strikes against a racist authoritarian juror in order for the cop to go free.
Only in America, of all the so-called “Western democracies,” can we watch video showing a cop shoot a running man in the back from 15 yards away, plant a weapon, and then ask, “Will he get convicted?”
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What is the definition of “accessory after the fact”? In the four days before the video changed things, how many cops became accessories after the fact? And how many will face any charges? I think you could count the number on the fingers of an amputee’s stump.
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Well, thing is, the only other cop who witnessed any part of this was the black cop who walked up in the end, who saw Slager plant the taser by Scott’s body but didn’t see Slager ventilate Scott. As long as Slager kept his story straight, and there wasn’t video proving otherwise, he was home free. All he had to do was repeat “He started turning towards me, I thought he had a gun, I fired in self defense” and that was that.
Except with a video showing that Scott was hoofing it the opposite direction without making any move or turn towards Slager, and showing Slager shooting him in the back with no provocation other than frustration… well.
Sucks to be Slager. But how many other cops have gotten away with it? A bunch, I suspect…
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Carry on…..
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