Friday, March 29, 2024
 
Reader Comments Reflect New Level of Outrage After S.C. Police Shooting

WASHINGTON, D.C. April 13 (DPI) – Comment boards reflected new levels of outrage following last week’s North Charleston, S.C., shooting as readers and the press made important distinctions among high-profile police incidents.  Op-ed articles too point out that even the police – their leadership, the rank-and-file, even their unions – recognize that the South Carolina shooting was a shocking and barbaric act by law enforcement. The police officer, Michael Slager, shot 50-year-old Walter Scott eight times in the back as he fled – and then planted a Taser gun next to Scott’s bullet-riddled body.

Readers were quick to make a distinction between this incident, captured on video by a nearby business owner, and other police incidents, including the August 2014 shooting in Ferguson, MO., which set off riots and protests.

Most recommended today on NYTimes.com:

The problem is that most people who want to be a cop are precisely the kinds of people who should not have that authority over others.

No amount of sentimentality changes that he gunned down a fleeing man and then tried to frame him as a greater danger than he was. A jury may disagree, may be very sparing, but the police community simply can’t shrug this off.

The killing of Walter Scott is a tragedy for all touched by it. But the video portrays Officer Slager gunning down a fleeing man and appears to portray him attempting to plant evidence on or near Mr. Scott’s body. This is despicable behavior by a police officer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/13/us/after-8-shots-a-quiet-officer-now-scorned.html

Slager, who was charged with murder and remains in jail apart from other inmates, was immediately fired by the North Charleston Police Department and the police officers’ union there has said little since his arrest.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/think-walter-scotts-death-is-another-ferguson-cops-dont/2015/04/10/2f989444-dfa8-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html?tid=hybrid_linearcol_2_na

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