CHARLESTON, United States // A white police officer has been charged with murder in the United States, hours after officials watched a dramatic video that appears to show him shooting a fleeing black man several times in the back.
North Charleston mayor Keith Summey announced the charges at a hastily called news conference in which he said city patrolman Michael Thomas Slager made “a bad decision.”
Saturday's shooting in the South Carolina city of North Charleston is the latest in a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. They include the deaths of Michael Brown in the Missouri city of Ferguson, and Eric Garner on Staten Island in New York. Both cases sparked protests nationwide and greater scrutiny is now being placed on shootings by police, particularly those that involve white officers and unarmed black suspects.
In the North Charleston case, authorities said the victim, 50-year-old Walter Lamer Scott, was shot after the officer had already hit him with a stun gun. The incident had begun when Scott was stopped for having a faulty brake light on his vehicle.
“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mr Summey said on Tuesday. “When you make a bad decision, don’t care if you’re behind the shield or a citizen on the street, you have to live with that decision.”
A video of the shooting released to news media outlets shows the officer firing eight shots at Scott’s back as he runs away. He falls on the eighth shot, which is fired after a brief pause. The video then shows the officer slowly walking towards Scott, and ordering him to put his hands behind his back.
When Scott doesn’t move, Mr Slager pulls his arms back and cuffs his hands. Then Mr Slager walks briskly back to where he fired the shots, picks up an object, and walks the 10 metres or so back to Scott before dropping the object by Scott’s feet.
Mr Slager’s then-attorney David Aylor had released a statement on Monday saying Mr Slager felt threatened and that Scott was trying to grab the officer’s stun gun. However, Mr Aylor dropped Mr Slager as a client after the video surfaced.
Attorney L. Chris Stewart, who came to North Charleston a day after the shooting to represent Scott’s family, said the video forced authorities to act quickly and decisively. He called the person who made the video a hero.
“What happened today doesn’t happen all the time,” Mr Stewart told a separate news conference. What if there was no video?” Scott’s mother stood nearby, saying, “Thank you, Lord” and “Hallelujah.”
Scott may have tried to run from the officer because he owed child support, which can get someone sent to jail in South Carolina until they pay it back, Mr Stewart said. He had four children, was engaged and had been honourably discharged from the US Coast Guard. There were no violent offences on Scott’s record, Mr Stewart said, adding that his family intends to sue the police department.
Justice department spokeswoman Dena Iverson said the FBI will also investigate the shooting.
At the news conference with the mayor, North Charleston police chief Eddie Driggers appeared close to tears.
“I have been around this police department a long time and all the officers on this force, the men and women, are like my children,” he said. “So you tell me how a father would react seeing his child do something? I’ll let you answer that yourself.”
Mr Slager was denied bond at a brief first appearance hearing on Tuesday. He was not accompanied by a lawyer. If convicted, he could face 30 years to life in prison. Mr Slager also served in the Coast Guard and had been with the North Charleston police department for five years.
North Charleston is South Carolina’s third-largest city and for years battled back from an economic slump caused by the closing of the Charleston Naval Base on the city’s waterfront in the mid-1990s.
But now the city has bounced back in a big way, largely in part to the huge investment by Boeing, which has a 787 aircraft manufacturing plant in the city and employs about 7,500 people in South Carolina, most of them in North Charleston.
* Associated Press
