No ifs, no buts. The circumstances surrounding the shooting dead of Walter Scott by policeman Michael Slager in South Carolina, on Saturday evening leave little room for ambiguity. The extraordinary video of this most casual and callous killing has prompted an outpouring of anger and forced local officials to lay immediate, unprecedented murder charges against the officer – in the last five years in 209 South Carolina officer-involved, "line of duty" shootings not one policeman had previously faced charges.
Scott’s killing will pour fuel on a raging US debate about police use of force against blacks. This shooting, after incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, Cleveland, Madison, Wisconsin, and New York, among other places, has drawn heavy scrutiny to confrontations that ended with black men dead.
The ubiquity of mobile phone cameras has brought a new credibility to longstanding claims of both institutional and individual racism in the police and its too-easy resort to force. In January, two Albuquerque officers were charged with murder for shooting a homeless man in a confrontation captured by an officer’s body camera. The death of Eric Garner on Staten Island last year after an officer put him in a chokehold – caught on bystander’s video – is being investigated by prosecutors. A video taken in Cleveland shows police shooting a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice, who was carrying a fake gun in a park.
Slager’s initial defence – on his radio: “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser” – was quickly abandoned when the video emerged. It was the all-too standard excuse of cops involved in killings – he feared for his life, the victim was armed. And then he appeared to plant a weapon on the body. His brother officers will have every reason to be furious. How many honourable officers doing a dangerous job and caught up in genuinely life-threatening situations will now be believed when they make the same argument?
But, just as importantly, hard questions have to be asked about the institutional culture within too many US police departments which allows the Slagers find safe haven. Until it is too late.