Police release video of traffic stop, fatal shooting
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. – The traffic stop starts like any other: an officer pulls over a motorist, walks up to the driver’s side window and asks for license and registration. What happened minutes later appears to take place without obvious sign of provocation or conflict: The driver opens the door and runs, and the officer chases after him.
Video released Thursday from the dashboard of white North Charleston police Officer Michael Thomas Slager’s cruiser captures the very first moments he and black motorist Walter Scott meet, a strikingly benign encounter at its earliest stages. It changes within minutes as Scott takes off running and the officer runs after him.
The video captures the moments leading up to a fatal shooting that has sparked outrage as the latest example of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man. The shooting itself was captured by an eyewitness on his iPhone and provided the impetus for the officer to be charged with murder and fired.
But questions had remained how the traffic stop turned deadly. The dash cam video provides a more complete picture of the encounter.
Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina, said the dash cam video shows nothing that would indicate that such a routine traffic stop would escalate to a fatal shooting.
“It’s not entirely normal. Most people don’t run during traffic stops. But it is not overly threatening or anything that should take an officer aback,” Stoughton said.
The shooting took place on Saturday and the department and Slager’s lawyer said the officer fired in self-defense during a scuffle over his department-issued Taser. Within days, the eyewitness video surfaced and immediately changed perceptions of what happened, leading the department to charge Slager with murder and fire him from the force he’d worked on for five years.
The dash cam video shows Scott being pulled over in a used Mercedes-Benz he had purchased just days earlier. Police have said he was being stopped for a broken tail light. Slager is seen walking toward the driver’s side window and heard asking for Scott’s license and registration. Slager then returns to his cruiser. Next, the video shows Scott starting to get out of the car, his right hand raised above his head, then he quickly gets back into the car and closes the door.
Seconds later, he opens the door again and takes off running. Within a city block or two, out of the dashboard camera’s view, Slager catches up to him in an empty lot.
A bystander noticed the confrontation and pushed record on his cellphone, capturing video that has outraged the nation: it shows Scott running away again, and Slager firing eight shots at his back.
There is almost nothing in Slager’s police personnel file to suggest that his bosses considered him a rogue officer capable of murdering a man during a traffic stop.
Both Slager, 33, and Scott, 55, were U.S. Coast Guard veterans. Slager had one complaint in his personnel file of excessive force that was ultimately dismissed. Scott had been jailed repeatedly for failing to pay child support. But neither man had a record of violence.
The officer is being held without bond pending an Aug. 21 hearing on a charge of murder that could put him in prison for 30 years to life if convicted.