On April 4, North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager illegally and unjustly executed Walter Scott.
Forty-seven years to the day after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the execution of Walter Scott says so much about our nation—some of it good, most of it not. This is a story of what happens when a human being is deeply devalued by a man with a gun and a badge, but, unlike the thousands of similar instances, filmed with a cell phone camera and put on display for the whole world to witness.
To be clear, Michael Slager is a stone-cold murderer. He has been charged with murder and was just fired by the North Charleston Police Department. What the family of Walter Scott knows and what the mayor and police chief of North Charleston know, though, is that Michael Slager would be free right now if his crime had not been captured by a brave man with a cell phone who had the courage to zoom in on what he believed to be impending injustice. Enough is known about this American horror story for us to draw some essential conclusions and begin to think through action steps we can all get behind.
Michael Slager Did Not Value Walter Scott as a Human Being
Watching the video of his son's execution, Scott's father said it looked like Officer Slager was aiming and shooting a deer instead of a beloved son and father of four. After he shot and killed Walter Scott, Slager appeared cold and calculated and seemed to care very little about the man he had just killed. He also appeared to plant his Taser next to Walter Scott and proceeded to stare at him with little show of regard or emotion. Nothing about the encounter suggests compassion or concern.
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In fact, in the police report, Slager lied about a struggle he and Scott supposedly had, lied about Scott stealing his Taser and lied about later performing CPR on the man that it appears he wanted to die that day.
The behavior of Slager mirrors the cold and heartless behavior that we've seen before from the officers who killed Akai Gurley and Eric Garner in New York and Tamir Rice in Cleveland. In each of those cases, officers seemed to have little regard for the humanity or dignity of their victims and seemed to have little urgency in attempting to save their lives while they still had a chance.
It is valid to wonder if Officer Slager would've acted this way with a white teenage girl with long blonde hair or a white senior citizen or even a white teenage boy on a skateboard trying to run away. If anyone else had been cited for a minor offense like a broken tail light, would he methodically gun them down from behind and frame them for something? It's doubtful.
Three days before Officer Slager killed Walter Scott, Scott had purchased a new Mercedes Benz. Two days before Slager killed Walter Scott, Scott purchased brand new silver rims for the car. His brother, knowing how police can be in North Charleston, warned him that it could potentially make him a target for police harassment. Two days later, Scott was confronted and killed by Officer Slager, who pulled him over in that very Mercedes.
While we don't have a video of Officer Slager screaming, "Die, Nigger!" as he fired bullet after bullet into the back of Walter Scott, that's not quite how all racism works. Racism is when you prejudge a person and think yourself superior to them because of the color of their skin. While we wait for details on whether Scott even deserved to be pulled over in the first place, what we do know is that Slager was willing to gun a man down like an animal and then frame him.
In San Francisco, in Ferguson, and in Florida, officer after officer has been caught in scandals that have proven them to be deeply racist, incidents in which they openly compare African Americans to animals, joke about killing "niggers" and giving them early executions, and share white power and KKK messages with one another. Not just low-level recruits, but police captains in these departments are being fired for racism.
What isn't being answered is just what impact this racism has had on the police work these officers have done. To believe that one can openly talk the worst racist talk imaginable, but compartmentalize it to text messages is just preposterous.
At its root, racism devalues the humanity of an entire group of people. If anything, what we saw Officer Slager do was devalue the life of a man in the most gruesome way imaginable.
What Officer Michael Slager Did Doesn't Surprise African Americans
The imagery of a police officer aiming, firing at and framing an unarmed black man surprised a total of zero African Americans. It was appalling and hard to watch, but nothing about it was surprising. Families all over America believe that their loved ones have been similarly murdered by police. Police departments have settled cases with hundreds and hundreds of families for billions of dollars for murdering loved ones. Planting evidence doesn't surprise African Americans. False reports don't surprise African Americans. Biased media coverage of early police lies doesn't surprise African Americans.
Quite the opposite is true. Every single day, literally, we learn of a new black man or woman killed by American police. Nearly every single day we hear new stories of black men who've been exonerated after serving their entire lives in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
Any reasonable person who watches Slager shoot, kill, plant the weapon and calmly file a false report doesn't believe he was the first police officer to do such a thing. He wasn't even the first person to be filmed doing it. The officer who shot and killed Tamir Rice didn't know he was being filmed and filed a report that was completely different from the video that showed him quickly executing a defenseless child.
Have you noticed the deafening silence from police officers around the nation who feel no need whatsoever to denounce the murder of Walter Scott? Where did Michael Slager learn this behavior? Do you not believe that officers inside departments and between departments share their tips and strategies with one another on how to plant evidence, what alibi to use, etc.? Does Slager look like a man who has no idea what he's doing? Or does he look like someone who is working from a calculated playbook that was already established in his mind?
We All Know What Would've Happened If That Cell Phone Video Didn't Exist
Before this video was released, news stories were already being published about a man killed in North Charleston after he stole a stun gun from a police officer. If this cell phone video was not given to the police and to the public, none of us, including the family of Walter Scott, would have any idea in the world what happened and we'd all be expected to believe the contrived narrative.
But what are the odds that when you are confronted and killed by a corrupt officer that someone is going to be there to film your demise? Is that the best we can do as a country? Is that our strategy? Without this brave stranger on the scene to film the execution of Walter Scott, Michael Slager would be still on the job today and would could have even been given an award for his bravery in the face of such an enormous risk.
Here's the thing: without cameras, we likely wouldn't even know the names of Walter Scott or Tamir Rice or Eric Garner. So far, cameras alone have not brought true justice in those cases, but they have taught us deep lessons about the violent behaviors of officers, sparked a national outrage against police violence, and have caused us all to get an honest glimpse into the often dishonest practices of police officers. While Michael Slager has not been convicted, he has been charged with murder and fired—solely based on existence of the video.
Indeed, it is trustworthy in part because it was filmed by a citizen. With cases of police flat out turning their cameras off, or "accidentally" leaving them off in instances of murder and brutality, we have a long way to go before the nation accepts body cameras as a hardcore solution to police brutality.