In rare move, feds indict former officer in fatal shooting
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Two things stand out about this week's indictment of a white former South Carolina police officer on federal civil rights charges in the death of unarmed black motorist Walter Scott:
Some, including attorneys for Scott's family, see the new indictment as a message from federal prosecutors that they've got their eye on law officers and are fed up with flagrant violence.
A bystander's cellphone video captured images of Slager, then a North Charleston police officer, firing eight times as Scott, 50, ran from an April 2015 traffic stop.
The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported this year that federal prosecutors have declined to pursue civil rights allegations against law enforcement officers 96 percent of the time since 1995, with most experts blaming the low prosecution rate on the difficulty of winning such cases.
The 12,703 potential civil rights violations turned down nationwide from 1995-2015 include high-profile incidents in Chicago, New York and Ferguson, Missouri, but also thousands of lesser-known incidents.
The chief prosecutor in the Charleston area is also heading up the death penalty case against Dylann Roof, the white man charged with gunning down nine people during Bible study at a historic black church last summer.