During the last week we have all been horrified by the terrible shooting of Walter Scott. There has been a bit of relief as, once the cell phone video surfaced, that the lies of Slager were admitted, and that for once, a police department has been going through the motions of doing the right thing. Slager has been fired and he has been arrested and charged with murder.
We have video and sound from two different sources: the police car's dash cam, and the cell phone video from the heroic bystander Feidan Santana.
I've been listening to quite a few talking heads on the subject, and most agree that the interaction caught on the dash cam was going the way an interaction with the police should go. It is useful to be informed of a broken tail light and normal to be asked for proof of insurance. Then, agree the talking heads, something terrible must have happened for the situation to have become so terrible when the pair got out of the lens of the dash cam.
I think the problem was that they got out of the view of the dash cam.
More thoughts below the swirls.
The fact that the dash cam was on may be what was keeping Slager polite and professional in the first place. It was when he was out of its view that he felt free to behave as he wanted to.
The casual way that Slager ran after Scott, the way that he shot 8 (8!) bullets in the direction of someone's back; the way he handcuffed a man who was dead or dying; the way he administered no aid; the way he moved the taser (and I know we're supposed to just say object, but s***, I'm not under oath so I will say categorically that I believe it was the taser) to frame the man he had just killed; his lies as he called in the incident - this is who Slager was when he believed he was not on camera. The sheer ease with which he did everything shows that he must have even thought about this exact scenario before.
The presence of the camera may be what modified his behavior, exactly the way we want police officer behavior modified.
There may have been some words between Slager and Scott. We may never know what, however. Scott is dead, and Slager is a liar. Whatever happened - and we know Scott did not take Slager's taser - could not have justified this heartless murder.
What we do know is that Slager's behavior was OK when the camera was present.
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Tired of politics? Need to escape? Try one of my Greek-mythology based novels, either the story of Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus or a trilogy about Niobe, or one of the first examples of civil disobedience, Antigone and Creon. Or, if you like mysteries and/or Jane Austen, treat yourself to The Highbury Murders: A Mystery Set in the Village of Jane Austen’s Emma very positively reviewed at the Daily Kos Monday Murder Mystery blog.