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Walter Scott's Death

Walter Scott's Death

Part of a series on Police Brutality Controversies. [View Related Entries]

Updated May 10, 2016 at 07:03PM EDT by Dreamworks.

Added Apr 08, 2015 at 04:04AM EDT by Brad.

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Overview

Walter L. Scott was a 50-year-old African American Coast Guard veteran fatally shot by North Charleston police officer Michael T. Slager while fleeing after a brief tussle during a traffic stop in North Charleston, South Carolina on April 4th, 2015. Following the circulation of video footage showing the shooting in the U.S. news media, Slager was charged with murder on April 7th.

Background

On April 4th, 2015, Walter L. Scott, a 50-year-old Coast Guard veteran and father of four children, was stopped by North Charleston Police Department Officer Michael T. Slager for having a broken taillight on his vehicle. According to the police reports, Scott fled from the routine stop, prompting the officer to chase him into a lot where he first attempted to subdue him with his electronic stun gun, which proved to be unsuccessful, then resorted to fire his weapon eight times, five of which struck Scott. Meanwhile, the shooting was captured on video by a bystander and provided to The Post and Courier and the New York Times for publication on April 7th (shown below).



Notable Developments

Soon after the video clip and the news of the officer's arrest began circulating online, the hashtag #WalterScott began trending worldwide on Twitter, garnering more than 313,320 mentions within the first 24 hours. In addition, the keyword "Walter Scott" topped Google's Trending Searches chart with over 200,000 search queries for the day of April 7th.

Search Interest

External References

[1] The Post and Courier – Video Shows Fatal Police Shooting

[2] New York Times – North Charleston officer faces murder charge after video shows him shooting man in back

[3] Topsy – Tweets Per Day: #WalterScott

[4] Twitter – Tweets about #WalterScott

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Top Comments

Albinus of Angers
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Albinus of Angers

in reply to thegreenchipmunk

She's easily made the most compelling point of anybody on this page so far.

Did you click the link? 319 people killed by police in the first three months of the year… and if we break just March down racially: 42 white males, 32 black males, 15 Latino males, 1 Asian male, 1 Pacific Islander male, 3 white females, 2 black females, and 18 men and women whose races were never identified.

Of all of those people who were killed by police in the month of March alone, how many did we hear about from the media? Why didn't we hear about Robert Rooker, 26 year old unarmed white male, lost control of his car on a gravel road and hit a police car, the police took it as an attack and rammed his car into the river, then got out and fired 17-20 shots until he was dead, no talking to him, no asking him what happened, they killed him.

Why do we only ever hear about racist white cops hunting down black guys? Why do we protest against racism instead of against police brutality? We say it's a monthly thing, we're so used to it, we argue about race for a few weeks and then we go back to our lives until the next media extravaganza, meanwhile hundreds of people of all races are being ruthlessly murdered and swept under the rug.

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