A 50-year-old North Charleston black man was shot eight times and killed by a police officer last weekend. Yesterday, video surfaced that showed police officer Michael Slager’s account of the story — that Walter Scott wrestled with him over a Taser before he had to use deadly force — was inaccurate. Slager was charged with murder yesterday. Scott’s older brother Anthony says he and his family are glad that video — seen on numerous news media outlets — is out. “It needs to be known across America what’s going on. This is what I hope it serves to the world. I hope they use better judgment and have better training.” Meanwhile, Ferguson has elected two black city council members.
Like an episode of Law & Order: SVU that hits too close to home but the criminal gets what’s coming to him, a youth soccer coach who worked at Catawba College in the ’80s received a life sentence yesterday. From the Observer: “Ralph Wager’s surprise plea came shortly after Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour ruled that a second incriminating tape could be used against Wager in this week’s trial. The charges involved two boys — a 9-year-old and a 13-year-old — and incidents that took place between 1987 and 1990.”
Are apartments coming to the land currently housing Philosophers Stone, which closed last weekend with a note on its door? So far, the owners haven’t responded to any media inquiries.
How do you help keep your city clean? By instituting a mobile bathroom on wheels program. That’s what San Francisco did for its Tenderloin neighborhood, bringing the bathrooms four days a week to areas near soup kitchens and parks. “Everyone has to go to the bathroom, that’s not something anyone can stop,” one local city supervisor told the AP. “This program affords people some dignity to take care of a human need.”
This article appears in Apr 8-14, 2015.
The story begins like this:
A stupid guy gets pulled over by an idiot cop…
the story goes like this: a scared guy gets pulled over by a murderer…
Yea, Cubbybear. You hear all the time about the police pulling over a car driven by a person of color for no reason and shooting them dead as they sit in their car with their hands on the wheel…
Perhaps if people chose to resist with the legal system instead of picking a fight with a guy with a gun, there would be fewer police shootings. Have you noticed that the same outcome occurs when two young men of color get in fights with each other and one or both are armed?