I feel that I have done all that I could on this blog to defend cops' actions in excessive force complaints. But words do not come easily in addressing the controversial shooting of Walter Scott.
Whenever a black person is shot--whether armed or not--the black witnesses declare that the dead man "wasn't doin' nothin'." Normally the black man is doing something illegal or at least poorly advised when the police shoot him. (In the case of Eric Gardner, for instance, he was accidentally killed during an arrest owing to his refusal to cooperate and his poor medical health. Michael Brown was attacking a cop when he was shot.) This isn't murder. It's crap police work.
In the Scott case, the cop apparently shot the black man because he didn't feel like running after him. We cannot ascertain what was in the cop's mind when he was shooting. What is evident from the tape was that this cop was trying to shoot a fleeing man in the back. Then he planted a weapon on him. Then several cops lied about performing CPR on him. And the man wasn't just very tanned--he was certainly black. It was so atrocious that the police department has condoned him. It was so terrible that all the cases that he has worked on will now be re-inspected by the media and lawyers for decades to come.
Yes, Walter Scott was most likely a deadbeat--but he never murdered anyone, white people. Let's get it straight who the thug is in this scenario. A guy who kills a man, then plants evidence is a worse human being than a man who has fallen behind on his childsupport and maybe hit a cop. The cover-up is worse than the crime of accidentally shooting a black suspect.
I hope in this forthcoming weeks we see plenty of feel good stories about the many good cops throughout America. I really do.
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