Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

A Shooting In The Shadow Of Vessey

I've visited Charleston twice. Once to make a documentary and another while passing through to Miami. I saw a lot of poor black people and a lot of rich ones. There are , imo a lot of ghosts of slavery past running around that place. That said, we have the recent shooting of which a video has surfaced that showed a police officer shooting a black male who was running away from him in the back.

The officer has been charged with murder, no doubt in large part due to the mess that is Ferguson and a desire to not be put under the same spotlight by the DOJ. I'll say from the outset that this case is different from the Mike Brown affair in many key aspects:

1) The deceased was not a suspect in a violent crime.
2) The deceased was actually shot in the back.

The former leads us to ask if this is in part a replay of the Eric Garner incident, where the police were acting in a heavy handed way for something that really shouldn't involve police at all. We do know that child support has been weaponized to the point where men are put in jail for being in arrears which does NOTHING positive for their future ability to pay. Not to mention that the courts are usually quite slow to enforce things like visitation, etc. when the recipient of child support decides to act a fool.

Now lets get into the actual incident as reported. Walter Scott was allegedly driving his car with a broken tail light. Not a big deal really. At worst you get a ticket, usually you get a little jabbering about how the cop is going to do you a favor and not ticket you but you need to get the light fixed....blah blah blah. So how did this routine stop end up with a person dead?

Well dude had a warrant out for his arrest for being in arrears for his child support. Well whatever we think about the weaponizing of child support, I find it seriously doubtful that he didn't KNOW that he had a warrant out for non payment. I mean how do you NOT know you HAVE NOT paid your child support?

So no doubt he was ASKED if he had warrants because police ask these things. I'm going to guess that Walter said "no". I suppose that the officer then looked up his records by running his license and saw there was an outstanding warrant. We do realize that if there is a warrant out for your arrest and you're stopped by a police officer they have the right to arrest you right? Did Walter not know this?

So it is clear that at some point Walter was out of his vehicle, most likely asked to get out after the warrant was found. Walter decided to make a run for it. This is called resisting arrest. Cop did not shoot him. At some point the officer catches Walter (who from what I saw on the video isn't exactly Usain Bolt). A taser is deployed that fails to stop Walter. We see that after Walter is tased he proceeds to run away from the officer, taser wires still attached to his body. We also note that a black object flies onto the ground (looks like it went into the grass). At this point the officer fires and Walter is soon dead.

The officer goes back to where the black object fell, retrieves it and drops it by Walter's body. I assume this to be the taser that was mentioned. Here are stills from the event:


Object hits the ground


Object still moving


Object still moving


Object coming to a stop


Notice the taser wire here. There are actually two of them at about 100 degree angle. This along with the trajectory of the object is the taser and that it was used prior to the pistol. So a weapon was not planted on Walter but was the object he had reportedly grabbed

Now while the officer clearly broke the law by firing at a fleeing suspect who posed no threat to him or anyone else (as required by the Supreme Court) and should be given a fair trial, I really have to ask why Walter thought running away and fighting with a police officer was a good idea.

Secondly, as I've pointed out in previous cases, let's not let emotions get in the way of the law. I strongly doubt a murder conviction will be had here. A manslaughter charge is definitely doable given the Supreme Court's last decision in regards to fleeing suspects.

Remember Training Day. It's not what you know. It's what you can prove in court.