U.S Cop Shoots Black Man Five Times in the Back, Video Nails Police Lie

NEW DELHI: A horrifying video has emerged that shows a white US police officer shooting an unarmed black man -- who tries to run away -- five times in the back. Michael Slager, the officer in North Charleston, South Carolina, has been charged with the murder of 50-year-old Walter Scott, after the emergence of this video.

The video, published by the New York Times, contradicts the version of events given by Slager, who said that he feared for his life after his gun was taken away by Scott.



The video shows the officer firing eight shots at Scott as he is running away. Scott falls to the ground on the eighth shot. The officer then walks up to him and orders him to put his hands behind his back. When Scott doesn't move, the officer pulls his arms back and cuffs his hands. He then walks briskly back to where he fired the shots, picks up an object, and returns the 30 feet or so back to Scott and drops the object by Scott’s feet.

The incident comes on the heels of high-profile shootings involving white police officers and unarmed black men in New York, Cleveland, Ferguson, Mo., and elsewhere that have reignited the debate on race and justice in the United States.

The foremost among these has been the case of Michael Brown -- an unarmed African-American teen who was shot dead by a white police officer in the suburb of Ferguson, Mo.

Another such case was that of Antonio Martin, an 18 year old black male who was shot fatally by a white police officer in a suburb of St. Louis in December 2014.

Also recently, protesters took the streets in cities across the US to over the death of Eric Garner, who was killed in an apparent chokehold by a white New York police officer. The protests began after a grand jury decided not to press charges and followed similar protests over a grand jury’s decision to not indict a white police officer who shot to death Michael Brown.

In November, police in Cleveland, Ohio, shot dead a twelve-year old African-American boy waving around what turned out to be a toy gun at a playground. In October, protesters took to the streets of South St. Louis following the fatal shooting of an African-American man by an off duty police officer.

Other incidents that have grabbed headlines have included 17-year old unarmed Trayvon Martin, who was killed by a neighbourhood watch captain. The shooter was eventually acquitted of murder in a racially charged case.

Other parallels have been drawn as well. The killing of 17-year old Jordan Davis, who was, along with his friends, shot at by a man for playing “loud music.” The jury convicted the shooter on four counts, but not on the count of murder, with many attributing the verdict to a racial context -- the shooter being white and the teenagers, including Davis who died, being black.

These incidents have brought to the surface years of frustration at a system where black men are far more likely to be shot at than their white American counterparts.

The most apparent parallel however, are the Los Angeles riots of 1992 -- where the trigger was the brutal police beating of Rodney King, which was videotaped and widely covered but ended in the acquittal of the officers concerned. These recent protests, much like the LA riots of 1992, may have been a reaction to an immediate trigger, but are located in a far broader context of marginalisation and discrimination.