This morning, ex-South Carolina police officer Michael Slager was found guilty of the murder in the fatal shooting that killed Walter Scott.
“I miss my father every day,”
-Miles Scott, Walter Scott’s son.
The police and law enforcement have shot and killed 909 black people since January 2017. How many of these law enforcers have been help accountable for their actions? The answer is not enough.
According to Dr. Philip Stinson, a researcher at Bowling Green State University, he found that 41 police officers have been charged with murder and manslaughter between 2005 and 2011. There haven’t been that many since. The question is, why is there such a high body count in the manslaughter of black people but more than half of these police officers have not been convicted?
Slager pulled Walter Scott over for a broken brake light on April 4, 2015, and Scott ran during the stop. After Slager deployed his stun gun, he fired eight bullets at Scott as he ran away, and Scott was hit five times in the back. Slager was accused of murder charges in the state court, but a jury in that case deadlocked last year, and the state charges were dropped as part of his federal plea deal.
Today, District Judge David Norton sentenced Slager to 20 years in prison for second-degree murder. This is an important moment because it doesn’t happen enough. Zero officers were convicted in 2014 and 2015. Only 13 officers have been convicted since 2005. Walter Scott’s family expressed that today they felt that the truth was told, after waiting for two years. Everyday there is a black person on the news who has passed away, because they were shot and killed. What we don’t hear is the police officer that committed the act has been convicted for the murder of this person.
