I don’t want to have to write this column again.
After the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri I wrote my thoughts – I lived in Missouri for several years and felt a tangential connection to the racial storm that brewed in the backyards of many friends.
Now my adopted home state of South Carolina is in the headlines as Michael Slager, a white, North Charleston police officer is being charged with the murder of Walter Scott, an unarmed black man.
We’ve seen this script before. There was Ferguson. There was the death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old Cleveland boy gunned down by a white police officer seconds after he arrived on the scene, despite the fact Rice was unarmed. There was Eric Garner, who was choked to death by New York police officers after being arrested for selling cigarettes. There are countless other deaths of black men from white cops under questionable circumstances nationally, going back decades.
We’ve seen this before in South Carolina, including recently. Right after Ferguson, here in Columbia then-South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert pulled over Levar Jones for not wearing his seat belt. After a request for his license led to Jones reaching back into his car, Groubert shot him. He later claimed Jones was charging at him, but his dashboard cam tells a different story.
Slager, through his attorney, claimed that he felt threatened and used deadly force as a last resort. The bystander video that has gone viral, showing Slager shoot Scott multiple times in the back as he runs away, tells a different story.
Critics charged that the media created the backlash after Ferguson and that the outrage was overblown. We may never know what really happened in Ferguson because we don’t have video. I believe that the vast majority of police officers are good people, but the video evidence again and again shows that there are bad apples out there and the bias of some officers against African-Americans is not imagined.
I believe we should trust police officers, even when they use deadly force. But as Ronald Reagan said, “trust but verify.” The mayor of North Charleston has said body cameras will be issued to all officers, which is a step in the right direction.
Most of these cases involve some sort of wrongdoing by the suspect – here Slager claimed Scott grabbed his taser. But too often the response does not fit the offense, and too often it is black suspects who are brutalized by white cops. Only mandatory video of police actions, swift justice for victims and some drastic action to reform community policing will change this horrible trend, and it is far past time it ends.
A few months from now, I hope I’m not writing about another black man killed needlessly by a white cop. I don’t want to have to write about it again.