Daily Times

The recent shooting of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man, by a white police officer (Michael Slager) who pulled him over for a broken taillight in South Carolina has sparked great public outcry in the US. There have been several incidents of US police officers shooting unarmed suspects without just cause, an overwhelming majority of whom were African-American, in the past year. Many civil rights activists believe that the police is more likely to use excessive force against black men and that such incidents have been occurring for decades. Yet recently, these shootings have been increasingly catching the public eye. The slew of media coverage, social media outrage and protests about the racist tilt of American police departments and their tendency to assume “suspicious” looking African-American men guilty of alleged crimes began with the killing of an unarmed black suspect, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Due to the ambiguity surrounding the eye witness accounts and facts of the case, a grand jury failed to indict Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot 18-year-old Brown dead after he stole cigarillos and pushed a sales clerk seven months ago. There were massive public protests both before and after the trial. As is often the case, Wilson claimed self-defence as his motive for shooting Brown. Incidentally, Slager also claimed that he shot Scott because he feared for his life, even though Scott had his back towards the policeman and was attempting to run away at the time. Slager shot Scott eight times and claimed that the latter snatched his Taser as he attempted to stun him.

There have been cases where police officers have shot at people pre-emptively, under the assumption that they are about to pull out a gun or retaliate and often, these concerns prove to be unfounded. Slager was accused of removing an innocent black man from his home and tasing him in 2013 but was found innocent by internal affairs. Internal police investigations are not reliable and it seems as though the comradery of the police causes them to protect each other. If Slager had been sacked after his first indiscretion, Scott’s death could have been prevented. Slager has been arrested for murder and this case could set the precedent for future incidents of police brutality, race-related or otherwise. The US Department of Justice seems to finally be recognising the need to enforce accountability for police officers who abuse their status, after the public outcry regarding this issue. The US police departments need to be restructured to hold police officers to a greater degree of responsibility with regard to the use of force. Racial sensitivity also needs to be incorporated into the training regimen, as do courses to develop skills to defuse crises, communicate effectively without coming off as threatening or escalating conflict and to assess the potential volatility of a situation accurately and without jumping to conclusions. *