Last Saturday in North Charleston, South Carolina, a routine traffic stop ended in a police shooting, and the death of Walter Scott. Under normal circumstances there would have been nothing remarkable about Scott’s death. Local media spent the weekend recounting the incident as told by Officer Michael Slager via his attorney, who claimed that Slager shot Scott after the traffic stop “turned into a physical altercation.” As the weekend progressed, more local affiliates in the area reported and recounted the same story, with the police report of the incident the only piece of information to rely upon as “fact.”
And then the amateur video hit the airwaves…
Overnight, what had been another “unfortunate incident” became the biggest piece of news in America, and the national media descended upon North Charleston like a pack of locusts. At the same time, the inevitable comparisons to similar incidents of police violence in Ferguson and New York began to gain traction and North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey quickly got out in front of the entire incident and did the exact opposite of everything that happened in Ferguson in the hopes of staving off social upheaval in his city.
By Monday, Officer Michael Slager had been placed in custody and charged with Murder. On Tuesday, before Mayor Summey took to the podium to deliver his much anticipated press conference, the Coroner’s Office had released the autopsy result, and Slager had been denied bail and fired from his job with the North Charleston Police.
Once the press conference began, Summey wasted no time in equivocally condemning the actions of former officer Slager and directly addressing the amateur video by stating that “As a result of that video and bad decisions made by our officer, he will be charged with murder,” and “When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, when you make a bad decision, I don’t care if you’re behind the shield or a citizen on the street, you have to live with that decision.”
Chief of Police Eddie Driggers followed Sumney and stated “I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw, and I have not watched it since.”
Shortly thereafter, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley released the following statement:
“We have many good law enforcement officers in the field. What happened in this case is not acceptable in South Carolina, nor is it reflective of our values or of the way most of our law enforcement officials act, and I assure all South Carolinians that the criminal judicial process will proceed fully. This is a sad time for everyone in South Carolina, and I urge everyone to work together to help our community heal.”
There are two very obvious takeaways from this quick and decisive chain of events. The first, sadly, is that were it not for the citizen who recorded and distributed the recording of the death of Walter Scott, this story would have come and gone without anything more than a token review of the actions of former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager.
Secondly, is that the images of Ferguson burning in front of the cameras of every major news organization in the country have made their way into the consciousness of those whose positions as public servants are under much more scrutiny than at any time in American history. By acknowledging the video, releasing the coroner’s report, and placing Slager under arrest without the long, drawn out, circus that is the Grand Jury process, Mayor Summey has probably spared his city (and himself) from the fate of Ferguson and most of its now unemployed public servants.