South Carolina Police Shooting.

I think this is mainly about why I should have gone to bed half an hour earlier last night.

On Saturday (4/4/15) Michael Slager - a South Carolina police officer - stopped a car in North Charleston over a minor traffic violation. As part of the stop the officer checked the drivers identity and discovered that the driver - Walter Lamer Scott - was wanted on an active arrest warrant. For reasons that are not yet clear before Scott could be arrested he fled from the scene leading to a short foot chase.

That chase ended in a near-by park with the altercation being filmed by a passer-by. Officer Slager drew his Taser and demanded that Scott comply with his lawful instructions. Instead Scott grabbed for the Taser and set off running. Slow motion replays of the video show that after grabbing the Taser Scott immediately dropped it however in the heat of the pursuit the officer did not see this and assumed that Scott was armed with what is considered a lethal weapon which at any point he could turn and fire on the officer or any other member of the public. So acting in self-defence the officer shot a killed Mr Scott.

In order to call this murder the prosecution will have to prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Officer Slager knew that Scott had dropped the Taser and therefore was not legitimately in fear for his life. As such I think that this case is unlikely to result in a conviction and is probably best dealt with by the police's internal disciplinary structures.

However post-Ferguson many US states are living in fear that anytime a black man is killed by the police - no matter how reasonably - the Justice Department will send investigators and rioters to swarm on them en masse to allow Obama to score a few race points. So they immediately charged Slager with murder without bothering to go through the usual Grand Jury process.

What really annoyed me about it last night though was watching it on CNN who still claim that Micheal Brown was an unarmed man despite even the Justice Department conceding that is simply not true. CNN had assembled three experts to discuss the story but there wasn't much of a discussion because not one of them was prepared to provide a critical analysis of the case instead all agreeing that it was a cold blooded murder. That is terrible journalism.

10:50 on 8/4/15 (UK date).