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There’s No Such Crime As ‘Driving While White’

There’s No Such Crime As ‘Driving While White’

The shooting of Walter L. Scott in South Carolina prompts the question:

When is the last time you heard of a white man in a Mercedes-Benz being pulled over for driving with a broken taillight?

It has probably happened somewhere, sometime, but there’s a better chance of your car being hit by a meteor.

Getting shot dead during a minor traffic stop also isn’t a prevailing fear among white males in America, no matter what type of vehicle they own.

Scott himself didn’t imagine he was going to die when he was pulled over. Unfortunately, he happened to be a black man driving a Mercedes, which is what got him noticed. He was behind on child-support payments and probably didn’t want to go to jail.

Something happened at the scene, Scott got Tased and then tried to run away. Officer Michael Slager fired eight times, hitting the unarmed 50-year-old in the back. The killing was caught on cellphone video by a bystander.

Slager told the dispatcher that Scott had snatched his Taser, but the video shows the officer dropping an object that looks just like a Taser near Scott’s handcuffed body. Slager has been charged with murder and fired from his job.

The shooting was shocking to watch, as the whole world has, yet the sequence of events leading up to it is sadly familiar to black men in this country. They can’t afford to drive around as carefree as us white guys.

In September, a South Carolina state trooper shot and wounded another unarmed black motorist after pulling him over because he allegedly wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.

I’ve got white friends who rarely buckle up, yet I don’t know of one who has been ticketed for it, or even stopped and warned. Maybe they’re just lucky.

The black comedian Chris Rock uses his Twitter account to record his traffic-stop encounters. In a recent seven-week period, he was pulled over three times (once as a passenger).

It’s possible he and his friends aren’t very good drivers. It’s also possible they’ve been targeted merely for “Driving While Black,” an unwritten offense that still exists in many regions of the country, not just the Deep South — and not just in high-crime areas.

The odds would be fairly slim for a black man driving a luxury car not to be pulled over at least once on a road trip between, say, Utah and North Dakota. Even in a ’98 Taurus he’d need to be watching the rear-view mirror for blue lights.

Generalizing about traffic stops can be problematic. The numbers often spike in certain neighborhoods at certain times of day, and a small number of officers can account for many incidents of racial profiling.

Still, the evidence that it exists is more than anecdotal.

Using a “Police-Public Contact Survey,” the U.S. Justice Department analyzed traffic stops of drivers aged 16 or older nationwide during 2011, comparing by race and weighting by population.

To the astonishment of hardly anyone, black drivers were about 31 percent more likely to be pulled over than white drivers, and approximately 23 percent more likely to be pulled over than Hispanic motorists.

A series published by the Washington Post in September reported that minority drivers had their cars searched (and cash seized) at a higher rate than white drivers. That jibed with the Justice Department’s conclusion that vehicle searches occurred substantially more often when the driver wasn’t white.

Another unsurprising fact: Compared to other races, white drivers were most likely to get pulled over for speeding. Black drivers were statistically more likely to be stopped for vehicle defects or record checks.

Which is what happened to Walter L. Scott in North Charleston.

Never in almost five decades of driving have I been pulled over for a busted brake light or a burned-out headlight, even though I’ve had a few.

It didn’t matter whether I was in a Dodge, Oldsmobile, Jeep, Ford, Chevy or even, for a while, a Mercedes SUV.

The only thing I’ve ever been stopped for is, like many impatient white people, driving too fast.

And every time a police officer walked up to my car, I knew exactly why he or she wanted to chat with me. It was no mystery whatsoever.

That’s not always the case for a black man behind the wheel of a car in this country. This is not just a perception; it’s a depressing reality.

If it had been me or Matt Lauer or even faux Hispanic Jeb Bush driving that Mercedes-Benz in South Carolina, Officer Slager wouldn’t have stopped the car. Not for a busted taillight, no way.

Which prompts another question: How long can this go on?

(Carl Hiaasen is a columnist for The Miami Herald. Readers may write to him at: 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL, 33132.)

Photo: Redjar via Flickr

Video Set One Fatal Police Shooting Apart

Video Set One Fatal Police Shooting Apart

By David Zucchino, James Queally, and Joe Mozingo, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — The family gathered for an impromptu memorial on the grass where Walter L. Scott had been shot to death by a white police officer the day before. They were still in shock, unable to accept police accounts that Scott had struggled with the officer over his Taser.

As they mourned, a stranger approached Anthony Scott, the victim’s brother. “I have something to share with you,” the young man told him.

He held out a Samsung cellphone.

On the screen, Scott, 52, watched a shaky video of his younger brother running away, unarmed, as an officer shot eight times at his back. Walter, 50, fell next to a tree and was handcuffed as he died.

“Oh my God,” Scott said.

For decades, African-Americans, including those in North Charleston, have complained that police shoot black men with little provocation and then falsely claim the officers did so out of fear for their lives.

This time there was video.

“The officer lied in his incident report and his lies were corroborated by the Police Department,” said Justin Bamberg, an attorney representing the Scott family. “It wasn’t until the video came out that all that changed completely.”

As the nation has struggled to reckon with a string of controversial police shootings in recent months, the now-viral footage of Scott’s shooting offers a rare bit of clarity.

Many of the previous cases had varying degrees of ambiguity — a toy gun, conflicting witness statements, chaotic video — that allowed debate to sharply divide along cultural fault lines and let possibly guilty officers go unpunished.

But after state investigators received the footage of Scott’s shooting late Monday, Patrolman Michael T. Slager, a five-year-veteran of the force, was arrested and charged with murder the next day. He was fired Tuesday night.

The swift action differs sharply from the aftermath of controversial shootings in Ferguson, Mo., Cleveland, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles, and a fatal chokehold by an officer in New York.

“I have watched the video and I was sickened by what I saw,” said Eddie Driggers, the North Charleston police chief, at a news conference. “And I have not watched it since.”

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey, speaking at a news conference Wednesday that was often interrupted by protesters, called the shooting a tragedy for both families — the white officer’s and the slain black man’s. The city will continue to pay health insurance for the officer’s wife, who is eight months’ pregnant, he said.

“This has been a horrible tragedy within our community,” said Summey, who had prayed earlier with the Scott family.

The police officer’s attorney issued a short statement Wednesday saying that he had just begun to look into the circumstances of the shooting.

“As we focus in on the facts, we will probably have more to say, but it is far too early for us to be saying what we think,” said Andrew Savage, a former prosecutor with the South Carolina attorney general’s office who will serve as Slager’s lead counsel.

Like Ferguson, where the shooting of an unarmed black man in August prompted months of protests across the country, North Charleston, population 104,054, is racially mixed — 47.2 percent black and 41.6 percent white, while the Police Department is about 18 percent black.

But unlike in Ferguson and some other cities, demonstrations have been peaceful, even though there have been long-standing tensions between the black community and the police.

Civil rights leaders attributed the relative calm to the quick decision by local prosecutors to charge Slager.

“Because the truth came out early, it’s been fairly quiet,” said Edward Bryant III, president of the North Charleston NAACP. “It’s only when the truth stays hidden that you get violence.”

Anthony Scott said he wanted to see the justice system convict Slager of killing his brother but did not want violent protests.

“I hope there will be no confrontations, and that people don’t take this in that direction,” he said.

The Justice Department and the FBI are assisting state authorities in the investigation and prosecution.

Scott was pulled over for a broken tail light Saturday morning as he approached an Advanced Auto Parts store where he was seeking parts for a 1990 silver Mercedes-Benz he had bought earlier in the week.

A father of four, he phoned his mother as he was being stopped. “Mom, I’m being pulled over,” his brother recalled him saying. That was the last time the family spoke with him.

Walter was wary about driving in the neighborhood, his brother said.

“In that area,” Anthony Scott said, “they will pull you over for anything. You have to be cautious in North Charleston. It doesn’t matter what race you are.”

Walter told his brother several times that he feared being stopped by the police because there was an outstanding warrant for him for failure to pay child support.

“I think that’s why he ran … rather than be confrontational,” Anthony Scott said. “He thought, ‘Let me get out of here.'”

Feidin Santana, the man who filmed the shooting, told NBC on Tuesday that he saw Slager and Scott engaged in a physical struggle on the ground before he began recording the incident.

Slager was on top of Scott while the two wrestled on the ground, according to Santana, who said the officer “had control of the situation.” As Scott stood up to run away, Santana said he could hear the buzz of Slager’s stun gun.

Walking along a low chain link fence, the bystander focused his phone on the two just as Scott appeared to break away from the officer. A small object is flung behind them, and Scott appears in the video to be connected to the wires of a stun gun.

Within two seconds, the officer takes aim with his handgun and fires. Eight shots sound off before Scott falls face first about 30 feet away.

After opening fire, Slager spoke into his police radio: “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.

The video shows Slager walking to Scott, who is lying prone, and handcuffing him, then walking back to the area where the object was flung. He leans down as if to pick an item up, then returns to Scott and drops something.

Scott’s family, their attorney and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter president believe the object is the stun gun, placed to appear as if Scott had it in his hands.

An autopsy found that Scott was shot five times — four times in the back and one shot that grazed his ear, according to Bamberg. He says the family plans to sue the city and Police Department for Scott’s shooting.

Watching the video Wednesday, retired Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Cmdr. Charles “Sid” Heal said he couldn’t see any way the killing was justified.

“The man basically is running and never even turns to look. He isn’t zig-zagging. He is just running and he’s shot several times in the back,” said Heal, who has testified in dozens of officer force cases. “Only with wildest of imagination can I contrive a set of facts that would explain it.”

This city’s black population has complained for years that the largely white Police Department uses excessive force, according to local civil rights leaders.

Before Scott’s death, lawyers for victims’ families and civil rights leaders had accused police on several occasions of wrongfully shooting black suspects.

“This incident fits a pattern of abuse that has gone on for years,” said Bryant, of the NAACP. Bryant says he suspects police of regularly planting or covering up evidence. “This is standard practice in this Police Department,” he said. “There is a code of conduct to cover their behinds. We call it Code Blue.”

The head of the American Civil Liberties Union in South Carolina said Scott’s death should raise larger questions about police in North Charleston, where residents have often said police make unnecessary traffic stops that are tantamount to racial profiling.

“We think that this should not be regarded as a one-time incident, a one-off shooting by a rogue officer,” said Victoria Middleton, executive director for the ACLU in South Carolina “It’s critically important that serious questions be asked about police methods.”

(Zucchino reported from North Charleston and Queally and Mozingo from Los Angeles. Staff writers Timothy M. Phelps in Washington and Christine Mai-Duc, Michael Muskal, Matt Pearce and Richard Winton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)

(c)2015 Los Angeles Times, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Racial Pain That Just Won’t Quit

Racial Pain That Just Won’t Quit

The good news in race this week is that after a municipal election in roiling Ferguson, Missouri, the six-member city council now has three black members instead of one. But the bad news, on the 150th anniversary of Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House, is beyond tragic.

In North Charleston, South Carolina, a white police officer was charged with murdering a black man after a video shot by a bystander showed that the man was running away from him. And in Princess Anne, Maryland, carbon monoxide from a generator was found to be the cause of death for a divorced black father and his seven children.

This is the week that the Confederacy, and slavery, suffered permanent defeat. Yet the back stories in these cases are reminders of both the nation’s original sin and the prejudices, pathologies, and policy failures that continue to haunt us.

Walter Scott, 50, the South Carolina victim, was stopped for a broken taillight and shot eight times. Officer Michael Thomas Slager’s detailed account of the incident was contradicted by the video, leading to the murder charge. Scott had four children, a fiancée, and a job. He had been arrested 10 times, according to the Charleston Post and Courier, mostly for failing to pay child support and show up at court hearings. The only indicator of violence, the newspaper said, came 28 years ago when he was convicted on an assault and battery charge.

Rodney Todd, 36, the Maryland man, was trying to keep his children warm after the local utility removed a stolen electrical meter from his rental home late last month. According to The Washington Post, Todd had a troubled, violent history with his ex-wife, the children’s mother, and served a year in jail. But friends and relatives said he had turned his life around, gotten a job at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, and become a proud, conscientious father.

Before Scott and Todd, there was Ferguson — not so much the killing of Michael Brown, but the devastating Justice Department report about police and court bias against poor black residents of the two-thirds black town, who were fined constantly for offenses like jaywalking and then jailed when they couldn’t pay those fines, producing cascading effects such as lost jobs and fury at the police and power structure.

Before Scott and Todd, there was also Eric Garner, the Staten Island, New York man put in a chokehold by police who were trying to arrest him for selling untaxed cigarettes. The chokehold was the main cause of death, aggravated by obesity and asthma.

Our history and our failures are flashing before our eyes in all of these cases. The statistics don’t lie. From the Congressional Research Service: Children living with single mothers are four times as likely to be poor as those in married households. From the Kids Count Data Book of 2014: Two-thirds of black children live in single-parent families, nearly twice the national average; one in three live in high poverty areas, more than twice the national average; and nearly one-third don’t graduate from high school on time, compared with 19 percent nationally. From the Pew Research Center: In 2010, black men were six times as likely as white men to be behind bars. And in 2013, after the Great Recession, white households had 13 times the median wealth of black households — the largest gap since 1989. From Gallup: Obesity and asthma are much more common among poor people.

Now add the shocking Justice Department reports on police violence and bias against black residents of Cleveland and Ferguson, and the reports to come from the agency’s continuing investigations of other police departments. And finally, if you are white, think about your white friends and family, your white self. How many of us have been stopped for a broken taillight or an expired inspection sticker and were — or pretended to be — surprised by that news? And not having missed child support payments or court dates, not fearing jail, we did not flee. And having the money and job flexibility to fix the problem, we simply promised to get it done. And instead of being killed or even ticketed, we were let off with a warning.

The North Charleston police chief says all officers will now wear body cameras. That’s progress, but not enough. It’s time for policymakers to put ideology, fixed ideas and electoral concerns aside, look at the data on what works, and start disentangling a Gordian knot that only seems to have gotten tighter and more toxic since that defining moment 150 years ago.

Follow Jill Lawrence on Twitter @JillDLawrence. To find out more about Jill Lawrence and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

AFP Photo/Mladen Antonov

Here’s What Police Were Saying About Walter Scott’s Death — Before The Video Came Out

Here’s What Police Were Saying About Walter Scott’s Death — Before The Video Came Out

On Tuesday a South Carolina police officer was charged with the murder of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott. The Post and Courier originally reported that the police were characterizing the shooting as a “traffic stop gone wrong.” But the event was captured in all its brutal clarity with a cellphone camera held by an anonymous bystander, and the video tells a different story.

Think Progress has compiled a list of all the statements issued by the North Charleston, SC, police department and the officer, Michael T. Slager (via his attorneys), between the shooting on Saturday and when they became aware of the video. The statements paint a harrowing, though not surprising, picture of the spinning gears of a system that typically spares white officers culpability for their use of lethal force.

According to Slager’s narrative, “the dead man fought with an officer over his Taser before deadly force was employed.” The grisly video, which first appeared on the New York Times website, plainly shows Slager take aim and fire eight shots at Walter Scott as he flees.

(ViaThink Progress.)