Michael Slager, the former police officer who was indicted for the murder of Walter Scott during a traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina in April 2015, has been released from jail on a $500,000 bond.
Slager, 33, was previously denied bail at the Charleston County Detention Center after footage from a cellphone video revealed an entirely different narrative from the one Slager reported after he shot Scott, 50, eight times in the back on April 4, 2015. Prior to his release, Slager had been held in solitary confinement since the shooting.
The initial police report claimed that during a routine traffic stop in which Slager pulled Scott over for a broken taillight, Scott fled the scene and Slager “deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him.” The statement further claimed that “an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device,” and that Slager “resorted to his service weapon” and shot Scott, only after Scott “gained control of the Taser” and attempted to use it against Slager.
However, the video of the shooting appeared to show Scott running away from Slager, Slager pulling out his gun and shooting Scott in the back, and Slager then approaching Scott’s limp body on the ground and planting his Taser next to it.
Slager was initially charged with the murder of Scott in April after the release of the video. He was then indicted by a South Carolina grand jury in June 2015.
Slager’s trial was set to begin in the spring. However, he is being prosecuted by Scarlett Wilson, who is also prosecuting Dylan Roof, who was charged with shooting and killing nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in June 2015. Wilson said a state Supreme Court order gives precedence to the church shooting.
Circuit Judge Clifton Newman set a trial date for Oct. 31 and allowed Slager to be released on a $500,000 surety bond, as long as he stays in South Carolina, on house arrest in an undisclosed location.
As police officers across the country are expressing concern over a “YouTube effect” resulting from the public’s ability to document and publish police activity with smartphones, the director of the FBI suggested this effect may be contributing to a recent rise in violent crime.
The Washington Timesreported that officers from over 30 agencies gathered in San Antonio for an annual National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) convention last week, where one of the main topics highlighted how to deal with “hostile media” with examples including officer-involved fatal shootings.
Lt. Gary Vickers of the Newark, New Jersey Police Department, indicated that he fears “death by media” if a video of his performance on the job were to go viral.
“Am I going to be the next one who is put on display for doing an honest job?” Vickers said. “It really dictates how a police officer reacts today.”
FBI Director James Comey told the Chicago Sun-Times that he believes the rise in violent crime is due to the fact that “something in policing has changed” and many officers now “feel under siege.”
“In today’s YouTube world, there are officers reluctant to get out of their cars and do the work that controls violent crime,” Comey said. “Our officers are answering 911 calls, but avoiding the informal contact that keeps bad guys from standing around, especially with guns.”
Comey also said when it comes to sentencing reform and lowering mass incarceration rates, he thinks Americans should debate the issue with “a fair understanding of history.” He used an example of Richmond, Virginia in the 1990s when he said that after dozens of men were incarcerated for trafficking narcotics, violence dropped in the area and citizens felt safer.
The “Youtube effect” was discussed by top law enforcement at a private meeting earlier this month. The Washington Post reported that a “unifying- and controversial- theory” was reached at this meeting, suggesting that officers have been dialing down on aggressive policing over fear of appearing on “a career-ending viral video.”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the meeting that “we have allowed our police department to get fetal and it is having a direct consequence.”
“They have pulled back from the ability to interdict … they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”
RT noted that while “homicides in 35 big U.S. cities are up 19 percent on average this year, and non-fatal shootings are up 62 percent, according to a police association survey,” there is also a rise in police killings.
According to a list from The Guardian, 931 people have been killed by police in the United States in 2015 thus far, with “black Americans killed by police twice as likely to be unarmed as white people.”
Cell phone footage has challenged some narratives of police officers in the cases of fatal shootings involving victims including Walter Scott, who was shot and killed while running away from an officer after a traffic stop in April, and Jeremy McDole, who was shot and killed while sitting in his wheelchair on the street in September.
In both cases, the officers’ official story of the suspect being armed was challenged by a bystander’s video that was released online.
The above-embedded Associated Press video captured the moment last Wednesday when South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley signed S 47 into law, a bill requiring all police in the state to wear body cameras.
Governor Haley signed the bill alongside family members of Walter Scott, an unarmed African-American man who was fatally gunned down by North Charleston, SC Police Officer Michael Slager during an April 4 traffic stop over a malfunctioning taillight. Slager has since been fired and charged with murder over his role in the tragedy.
According to The Post and Courier, the bill grants state law enforcement agencies a nine month grace period to obtain state funding and implement the body cameras. WYFF-TV notes that it also provides funding for the cameras and prohibits the footage taken by them from being obtained by the public through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Cato Institute’s Matthew Feeney wrote, “Among those permitted to access police body camera footage [under the South Carolina law] are: the subjects of a body camera footage, criminal defendants, civil litigants, and attorneys representing any of these people.”
The bill was introduced in December of 2014, but failed to gain traction until Walter Scott’s highly-publicized officer-involved death in April of 2015.
Said Governor Haley at the bill’s signing ceremony, “What did happen was we saw a sad tragedy, we saw a good man die when he didn’t have to, and we saw a few amazing things happen — we saw everybody step up and say, rather than being victims to this, we’re going to lift everyone up and make the state better, and that’s why this is a proud day. That’s why this is a good day, because this was about saying we don’t ever want a day like that to happen again… This is going to strengthen the people of South Carolina, this is going to strengthen law enforcement, and this is going to make sure that Walter Scott did not die without us realizing we had a problem.”
“I’m sure my brother is looking down and saying: ‘Good job. Good job, South Carolina,’” said Walter Scott’s brother Anthony Scott, according to The Aiken Standard.
Said Democratic State Senator Gerald Malloy of the law, “It is a great day in South Carolina, because we become the first state in the country that has a requirement for all law enforcement to end up wearing these body cameras.“
A South Carolina grand jury indicted former police officer Michael Slager on Monday for the murder of 50-year-old Walter Scott. Slager fired eight shots at Scott’s back as Scott ran away from him following a traffic stop in North Charleston on April 4.
As Truth In Media previously reported, Slager was fired and charged with murder by state law enforcement almost immediately after a video of the shooting surfaced.
The video, which was captured on a bystander’s cellphone, showed a different narrative of the shooting than what Slager originally reported.
An initial statement from Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor claimed that during a routine traffic stop, in which Slager pulled Scott over for a broken taillight, Scott fled the scene, and Slager “deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him.” When that did not work, the statement claimed that “an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device,” and that Slager “resorted to his service weapon” and shot Scott, only after Scott “gained control of the Taser” and attempted to use it against Slager.
In contrast, the video of the shooting, filmed by 23-year-old barber Feidin Santana, shows a different scene.
Warning: The following video contains graphic content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6-jFQPu-yo
The video of the shooting that was taken by Santana appears to show Slager running back to the initial scene of the altercation, picking up his Taser, and then running back to Scott, dropping the Taser next to Scott’s body.
Following the release of the video from the shooting, the State Law Enforcement Division of South Carolina released a video from the dash-cam in Slager’s car. The video shows Slager approaching Scott’s car, and notifying him that he is being stopped for a broken taillight. After speaking with Scott, Slager returns to his car, and moments later, Scott jumps out of his car and started running away.
While the dash-cam video does include the audio of the moments when Slager attempted to stop Scott with a Taser, it does not show video footage of the two, and it does not include the moments when Slager pulls out his gun and begins to shoot at Scott.
The Associated Press reported that Prosecutor Scarlett Wilson said that although Slager has been jailed without bond since his arrest, and faces 30 years to life in prison, if convicted, the death penalty does not seem to apply in this case because there were “no aggravating circumstances such as robbery or kidnapping as required under South Carolina law.”
Update April 13, 8:20 PM: The title of this article has been changed to more accurately reflect the content of the audio recording.
BenSwann.com previously reported on the controversial, caught-on-video shooting of Walter Scott by South Carolina Police Officer Michael Slager. The incident began when Officer Slager pulled over Walter Scott in North Charleston over a broken taillight on Scott’s vehicle. When Scott fled the scene on foot, fearing that he might end up in jail as he had fallen behind on child support payments, Slager unsuccessfully attempted to catch him and then opened fire on Scott from behind with 8 shots, killing him.
Though Officer Slager claimed that Scott had attempted to steal his stun gun during a struggle, causing him to feel threatened, bystander video appeared to contradict the claim that Scott was a threat, and Slager was charged with murder. Meanwhile, The Guardian recently released an audio clip, embedded below and taken from Officer Slager’s dashcam, in which he can be heard laughing about being fired up on adrenaline after killing Walter Scott during a debriefing with a senior officer.
The above-embedded audio begins with Officer Slager asking a senior officer what to expect after shooting Scott. The unidentified officer said, “We’ll get you up to headquarters… Probably once they get you there, we’ll take you home. Take your crap off, take your vest off, kind of relax for two or three. They’re going to want to interview you. Once they get here, it will be real quick. They’re gonna’ tell you you’re gonna’ be out for a couple of days and you’ll come back and they’ll interview you then. They’re not going to ask you any kind of questions right now. They’ll take your weapon, and we’ll go from there. That’s pretty much it… The last one we had, they waited a couple of days to interview officially, like, sit down and tell what happened.”
Then, the senior officer told Slager, “By the time you get home, it would probably be a good idea to kind of jot down your thoughts on what happened, you know, once the adrenaline quits pumping.”
Officer Slager then replied while laughing, “It’s pumping!”
The above-embedded clip came from a longer audio recording that also captured the moment when Officer Slager answered a phone call from his wife and gave his side of the story to her. Said Officer Slager on the call, “Hey. Hey, everything’s OK, OK?… He grabbed my taser, yeah. Yeah, he was running from me.”
Two videos portraying events from the “traffic stop gone wrong” that ended when Walter Scott, a 50-year-old unarmed black man was shot and killed by Michael Slager, a 33-year-old white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, have shed light on multiple errors in Slager’s initial report.
The shooting occurred on Saturday morning, and it wasn’t until Tuesday that a video, which was taken on a bystander’s cell phone, was released. The video showed Slager firing eight shots at Scott, as Scott ran away. Following the release of the video, Slager was charged with first-degree murder.
Think Progress reported that “charges against South Carolina police officers for shooting someone are extremely rare,” and that it appears that during the two days between when the shooting happened and when the video was made public, Slager appeared to be “unaware that video of the entire incident existed.”
On Saturday, the Charleston Post and Courier reported that North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor released a statement, claiming that “a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him,” then when that did not work, “an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device.”
The statement also claimed that Slager “resorted to his service weapon” and shot Scott, only after Scott “gained control of the Taser” and attempted to use it against Slager.
On Monday, the Charleston Post and Courier reported that Slager’s lawyer, David Aylor, released a statement, which closely resembled the statement from the North Charleston police, regarding Slager’s account of the incident.
Aylor said that Slager “thinks he properly followed all procedures and policies before resorting to deadly force.”
“When confronted, Officer Slager reached for his Taser — as trained by the department — and then a struggle ensued,” Aylor said. He went on to explain that Slager “felt threatened and reached for his department-issued firearm and fired his weapon,” when Scott “tried to overpower Officer Slager in an effort to take his Taser.”
As previously reported, Aylor announced on Tuesday morning that he is no longer representing Slager.
Think Progress noted that if the video of the incident had not surfaced, “that’s where the story might have ended,” as shown by a study conducted by The State, which found that police in South Carolina “have fired their weapons at 209 suspects in the past five years” but none were convicted, and the prosecutor “ruled all the shootings were justified.”
The video of the shooting, which was taken by Feidin Santana, a 23-year-old barber who immigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic, was made public on Tuesday.
Warning: The following video contains graphic content.
On MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Santana said that he considered erasing the footage, because he was worried that if he release it, his life could be in danger.
“I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger. I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else,” Santana said. “I knew the cop didn’t do the right thing.”
Santana explained that he chose to release the video to Scott’s family, after he read the news reports about the shooting. He said, “It wasn’t like that, the way they were saying.”
In Slager’s account of the incident, he said he “felt threatened” by Scott, and only resorted to shooting Scott, after he claims that Scott reached for his Taser. The video of the shooting that was taken by Santana, appears to show Slager running back to the initial scene of the altercation, picking up his Taser, and then running back to Scott, and dropping the Taser next to Scott’s body.
On Wednesday, Arthur Aidala, a legal analyst for Fox News, said that in his experience, in the 1980’s and 90’s, the practice of police officers “planting a weapon” on a victim was “standard operating procedure,” and that police officers “would keep a second gun that nobody knew about on their ankle, so if they ever killed someone they shouldn’t have they would take that gun out and leave it.”
The State Law Enforcement Division of South Carolina released a video from the dash-cam in Slager’s car on Thursday. The video shows Slager approaching Scott’s car, and notifying him that he is being stopped for a broken taillight. After speaking with Scott, Slager returns to his car, and moments later, Scott jumps out of his car and started running away.
While the dash-cam video does include the audio of the moments when Slager attempted to stop Scott with a Taser, it does not show video footage of the two, and it does not include the moments when Slager pulls out his gun and begins to shoot at Scott.
The incident involving Scott is not the first time Slager has been involved in an altercation. On Thursday, The Guardian reported that Mario Givens, a black man from North Charleston who filed a complaint about excessive force against Slager in 2013, announced that he intends to sue the city’s police department. In his complaint, Givens said that Slager knocked on his door around 4 a.m. in Sep. 2013, and without giving a reason for the visit, demanded that Givens put his hands up. He said that he complied, but Slager proceeded to use a Taser on him.
The Charleston Post and Courier reported on Thursday, that the Scott family’s lawyer, Chris Stewart, has confirmed that the family plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against Slager.
Ben Swann discussed the shooting and what led up to it with on RT America, RT Correspondent Manuel Rapalo, who was reporting from outside City Hall in North Charleston, South Carolina:
The State Law Enforcement Division of South Carolina has released a copy of the dash cam footage from North Charleston police officer Michael Slager’s patrol car in the moments before he fatally shot Walter Scott.
The vehicle was initially pulled over because of a broken tail-light. After Officer Slager approaches the car, he speaks with Scott and then returns to his patrol car. Moments later, Scott darts from the vehicle in an attempt to escape.
Scott was pulled over around 9:30 a.m.
As we have reported, Slager has been arrested and charged with murder.
Warning: The images we are about to show you are graphic.
Following the shooting of Walter Scott, a 50-year-old unarmed black man who was running away from the scene of a traffic stop, by Michael Slager, a 33-year-old white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, the video a bystander recorded of the shooting challenges Slager’s initial report, and raises the question of how often weapons are planted on victims.
Arthur Aidala, a legal analyst for Fox News, addressed the topic on Fox & Friends on Wednesday, and pointed out the fact that the video taken by a bystander, Feidin Santana, appears to show Slager running back to the initial scene of the altercation, picking up his Taser, and then running back to Scott, and dropping the Taser next to Scott’s body.
Aidala went on to say that in his experience, planting a weapon on a victim was standard procedure for police officers in the 1980s and 90s.
“When I was in the DA’s office in the 80s and 90s, that was standard operating procedures,” Aidala said. “Police officers – I hate to say this – would keep a second gun that nobody knew about on their ankle, so if they ever killed someone they shouldn’t have they would take that gun out and leave it.”
Feidin Santana, a 23-year-old barber who immigrated to the US from the Dominican Republic, was the one who used his phone to record the shooting. In an interview with NBC News, Santana said that he turned in the video, because he thought the Scott family would like to know the truth.
As previously reported, Michael Slager has been charged with murdering Walter Scott, after firing eight shots at him as he ran away. There was a traffic stop prior to the shooting, where Slager pulled Scott over for a broken taillight. There was also a warrant out for Scott’s arrest because he owed child support payments.
Aidala said that in terms of Slager’s sentencing, there would be “no sympathy for this police officer” other than the fact that he is a “33-year-old human being who is getting paid $40,000 to protect his own life and protect everyone else’s life.”
“Nobody thinks this cop woke up that morning and said let me go kill somebody. He made split second decisions and they were wrong. Obviously he made wrong decisions,” Aidala said. “It’s going to be about, in my opinion, how much jail time does he serve.”
