Annoyed

Who knows what the outcome would have been were it not caught on camera.

Police killing blacks is nothing new here in UK, e.g. in police custody and also the highly controversial/inflammatory case of Mark Duggan

 

Agreed, the subject isn't funny; I was musing on the irony.

 

I liked the comment made by a man speaking on behalf of the victim's family

I think it raises a good point. How many other cases occur just like this where there was no video to prove what had happened?

 

One thing that puzzles me, why was he running away for having a faulty brake light?

 

I have a cousin living in the US, she tells me that these days there are places you dont go anymore, in the cities.
Places she took me in the 80s.
I know its been like that for years, but apparently its worse these days.

The Cops are trigger happy, but I think its easy to get that way when your life is on the line every day, not knowing who, or what,you are dealing with.

Not quite as bad over here, but I'm sure there are places its not good to frequent if you dont have your wits about you.

 

My guess is that the cop said something menacing/threatening, i.e. overstepped the mark and scared the poor guy.

 

A license to kill, dont call 911 if your black.The cops are just as dangerous as the hoods over there.

 

Well the cop is being charged with murder...rightly so. I hope they make an example of him because so many blacks have been angry and rioting over other lethal injustices to them in US

 

According to the witness (who took the video) he had been tazered moments before. Maybe he was concerned for his own welfare?
So, another question might be: why was he tazered for having a faulty break light?

 

I'm guessing it's justified if the person fleeing has a weapon and is likely to be a danger to others (which clearly wasn't the case here) or if he's already shot someone and is fleeing

According to this article the sequence of events was as follows (there is video evidence supporting this from the cop car's dashcam):

• Video taken from Officer Slager's car shows cop telling father-of-four Walter Scott his third brakelight is broken

• They engage in civil discussion, Scott explains he doesn't have insurance papers or registration

• Slager says 'alright' and calmly walks back to his car to get something

• After two minutes, Scott opens his car door and flees

So it's unknown why he fled, although it says he may have done so because he feared being arrested for failing to pay child support.

Normally I like to take a balanced view on both sides of the story (especially since the media tend to sensationalise). The next piece of footage was from someone's phone which shows him being shot, but there is a gap in the middle of the two bits of film where something happened, we don't know what.

However, whatever it was that happened in between, there is no justification for shooting an unarmed man in the back when he's running away and clearly not a danger to anyone. But to shoot him 8 times and then handcuff him?!?!?!?!

Police do appear to be trigger happy at times but it's a far more high pressure job over there than it is in the UK (because of gun ownership) and they rarely show the other side of the coin. I'm certainly not going to demonise the whole police force in America because of a few incidents which have been reported recently. These stats make interesting reading:

"A total of 1,501 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty during the past 10 years, an average of one death every 58 hours or 150 per year."

On the other hand, wikipedia says that 593 people were killed by law enforcement officers in 2014 (don't know the stats on how many of them were justified) and you're far far more likely to get shot by police if you're black.

I don't know what the answer is to this problem. Sadly, gun crime is so rife in America that if you disarmed all the police it's likely there would be a hell of a lot more killings both of police and innocent civilians.