Politics

feature: “south carolina officer is charged with murder in black man’s death”

April 8, 2015

Yesterday a white police officer, Michael T. Slager, in North Charleston, South Carolina, was charged with murder after being caught on video fatally shooting unarmed Walter L. Scott (pictured). The incident took place on Saturday, the result of a scuffle – after a traffic stop – in which Slager claimed he had feared for his life after Scott stole his taser gun. However the surfaced video has refuted his claim that Scott took his gun and clearly shows Slager firing at Scott eight times as the unarmed man attempts to flee the scene. As The New York Times reports, the shooting has come on “the heels of high-profile instances of police officers’ using lethal force in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere” and those deaths, as will Scott’s, have “set off a national debate over whether the police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.” Read more on this story here and watch the video below (warning: the video contains graphic content).


By Alexander Aplerku, AFROPUNK Contributor

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