SC police officer charged with murder after shooting man during traffic stop (+ video)

In what seems to be an unprecedented move in South Carolina, a police officer in North Charleston will be charged with murder after shooting a man during a traffic stop over the weekend, authorities said Tuesday.

The decision, which follows a year of protests and demonstrations over excessive police violence nationally, was announced by the city’s mayor and chief of police at a news conference Tuesday afternoon. Authorities said the officer would be charged with murder after they viewed video footage of the incident that showed the officer shooting the man in the back as he was fleeing the scene.

This officer, identified by local media outlets as Patrolman 1st Class Michael Thomas Slager, has been taken into custody, Police Chief Eddie Driggers said at the news conference.

“It’s been a tragic day for many,” Driggers said. “A tragic day for many.”

The shooting followed a traffic stop made shortly after 9:30 a.m. Saturday, according to a police report. After Slager stopped a vehicle, he began chasing the driver, described in the report as a black man and identified by local reports as Walter Scott.

At this point, Slager told the dispatcher, “Shots fired and the subject is down, he took my Taser,” according to the portion of the report filled out by another officer who relayed what he heard.

However, at least a portion of the confrontation was videotaped by another person in the area, authorities said Tuesday afternoon. The man who filed this footage took it to Scott’s family and it was given to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the agency investigating the shooting.

“I can tell you that as a result of that video and the bad decision made our officer, he will be charged with murder,” North Charleston Mayor R. Keith Summey said at the news conference.

It’s rare that an officer who fires in the line of duty would be charged at all, much less convicted. A murder charge is unprecedented in at least the past five years, The State newspaper found in its analysis of 209 suspects in officer-involved shootings across South Carolina between 2010 and 2014.

This shooting comes after incidents in Ferguson, Mo., and New York, among other places, have drawn heavy scrutiny over confrontations that ended with black men dead. The unrest has continued into this year, as a shooting in Madison, Wisc., was followed by lengthy protests.

Authorities stressed that the episode in South Carolina was not indicative of the city’s entire police force of 343 officers, instead calling this a singular “bad decision” made by one officer.

“I think all of these police officers, men and women, are like my children,” Driggers said. “So you tell me how a father would react to seeing his father do something? I’ll let you answer that.”

Officials and activists said they were asking the community to keep calm in the wake of the video’s release and the decision to seek murder charges against him.

“We want to ask the community to remain calm,” Elder Johnson of National Action Network said Tuesday.

This story was originally published April 7, 2015 at 8:03 PM with the headline "SC police officer charged with murder after shooting man during traffic stop (+ video)."