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| Solidarity, not skepticism: Patrolman Slager's supervisor comforts the killer as the victim's life ebbs away. |
As many have said, were it not for the video, Michael Thomas
Slager would have been quickly exonerated – and, most likely, received a
commendation – for the killing of Walter Scott. The most remarkable aspect of
that video, however, is not the unbearable spectacle of the shooting itself,
but rather the composed, almost clinical way that Slager executes the victim,
and the ease with which he makes the transition from the killing to the
cover-up.
Slager’s body language while drawing and firing his gun suggested
annoyance, rather than urgency. He never bothered to render aid to Scott,
choosing instead to handcuff the dying man – fortifying the pretense that the
unarmed man who had fled in terror had been a threat to him. Although Slager had sauntered over to examine
and truss his victim, he sprinted – well, waddled vigorously – back to the
scene of the previous altercation. He retrieved his Taser and then deposited it
next to Scott’s bullet-ridden body.
In doing so, Slager tampered with evidence in a crime scene.
The patrolman did this casually, in full view of a second police officer, acting
in the serene confidence that he would not be required to explain or justify
his actions beyond recitation of the familiar formula: “He resisted arrest, he
made an aggressive move for my Taser, I feared for my safety and had no choice
but to use lethal force.”
A variation on this approach had worked for Slager following
an
excessive force complaint for using his Taser on an unarmed, unresisting man
who was arrested in his own home without cause or explanation. That
incident, significantly, was not video-recorded, and no other witnesses were
available to contradict the typically mendacious account inscribed by Slager in
his official report. Following a review process designed to vindicate the
actions of its officers, the North Charleston PD ruled that Slager’s aggravated
assault was “justified.”
The same result would have been achieved in the murder of
Walter Scott were it not for the presence of a young man equipped with a
cellphone and armed with exceptional courage and presence of mind. That
complication is the only reason why this incident deviated from the
long-established script.
If not for the video, this shooting -- like all other officer-involved
shootings – would never have been investigated as a potential criminal
homicide, but rather as an “assault on law enforcement.” From that perspective,
Scott was identified as the suspect, and Slager as the victim.
The immediate priority for the first “investigator” on the
scene was to see to the welfare of the assailant, and to reassure him that he
had done the right thing. This explains why the “investigating” officer, rather
than confronting the shooter, placed a comforting, collegial hand on his shoulder.
The supervisor remained in that posture as Slager recited the first draft of
what would have been codified as official “truth” – if
Feidin Santana hadn’t happened upon the scene while he was on his way to his
job in the productive sector.
Addressing the media after Slager was charged with murder, North
Charleston PD Chief Eddie Driggers described
himself as “sickened by what he saw” in the Santana’s video. Driggers was
appointed to the post three years ago after serving as a law enforcement
chaplain. His appointment was made by Mayor Keith Summey without
a vetting process of any kind. According to the mayor, Diggers
was the obvious choice because of his “experience in law enforcement” and the
fact that “a lot of my officers know him, like him and respect him.”
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| Chief Driggers (r) with Mayor Summey. |
His ministry
as senior deputy chaplain with the Coastal Crisis Chaplaincy was “to
provide pastoral care and counseling for employees and families of first
responders” and assisting “the Mobile Crisis Unit and SWAT teams” in various
circumstances.
The group’s “Chaplaincy
Log” is replete with mentions of ministerial visits and counseling sessions
with “first responders,” local police, FBI agents, the Coast Guard, and other
members of the State’s enforcement caste. There is the occasional mention of a
pastoral visit to a “civilian” in need of comfort, but they are very much the
exception. The ministry is overwhelmingly devoted to the needs of the State’s
emissaries of official violence, rather than addressing the concerns of the
public supposedly served by them.
Driggers
spent 35 years as a police officer – including a SWAT operator -- before
becoming a chaplain in 2008. When he left that ministry to become North
Charleston Police Chief, his
place was filled by Harry Sewell, who had just retired as police chief in
Charleston.
Given Driggers’ background, and that of the ministry in
which he was involved, it’s a reasonable surmise that he was devoted to the
Gospel of Authority, so memorably expounded by the Rev. Franklin Graham in a recent Facebook post:
“Listen up, blacks, whites, Latinos, and everybody else.
Most police shootings can be avoided. It comes down to respect for authority
and obedience. If a police officer tells you to stop, you stop. If a police
officer tells you to put your hands in the air, you put your hands in the air….
It’s as simple as that. Even if you think the police officer is wrong – YOU OBEY.
Parents, teach your children to respect and obey those in authority.”
Instant, unqualified obedience to police is necessary,
Franklin insists, because “The Bible says to submit to your leaders and those
in authority `because they keep watch over you as those who must give an
account.’”
Franklin has elsewhere declaimed against Islamic law as if he
were an expert. The deficiency he displays in expounding Romans 13 should
govern assessments of his competence in interpreting scriptures from other
religious traditions.
While there’s no way to know if Slager – who, like his victim, had served in the Coast Guard -- had been catechized in that view
of Romans 13, he clearly acted on the same assumptions regarding authority and
the propriety of summary execution as punishment for Mundanes who do not render
the required tribute of immediate submission. The same assumptions were evinced
by the studied lack of curiosity on the part of Slager’s comrades at the crime
scene, and the readiness with which his supervisors retailed the killer’s
fiction to the public.
The killing of Walter Scott “is not reflective of this
entire police department,” Driggers
maintains. “One does not throw a blanket across the many.”
This was an oddly appropriate choice of metaphor, given that
a blanket is used to cover something up. Feiden Santana – who, unlike Slagle,
did legitimately fear for his life – saw the blanket being pulled over the
incident and at considerable personal risk made the evidence available to the
victim’s family. Once again: This is the only reason why Slager was fired and
charged with murder, rather than being exonerated and most likely given a
promotion.
Michael Slager’s appearance is that of the clean-cut,
all-American family man. His professional behavior was that of a privileged
sociopath, which is to be expected: Police officers are vocational sociopaths.
A sociopath, as the term was defined upon its introduction
in 1930, is someone who displays a “disposition to violate social norms of
behavior” through “deceitfulness … impulsivity … irritability and
aggressiveness … [a] reckless disregard for safety of self or others,” and a “lack
of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt,
mistreated, or stolen from another.”
Law enforcers – as opposed to peace officers, especially
private security operatives – have official permission to employ aggressive
violence and escalate it to lethal levels if they meet resistance. They are
clothed in “qualified immunity” that protects them from accountability and
liability for committing acts that would otherwise result in prosecution. As
noted above, when they kill someone, police officers are immediately designated
the victim, and the decedent is assumed to be the perpetrator.
Owing to the nature of the job – at least as it’s presently
defined – law enforcement selects for sociopathic personalities, and it is an
occupation perfectly calibrated to create “secondary sociopaths” – that is, “those
who become antisocial because of environmental factors.”
In their significant study “The Sociopathic Police
Personality: Is It a Product of the `Rotten Apple’ or the `Rotten Barrel?’”
(Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, Vol. 14 Number 1), Catherine
Griffin and Jim Ruiz of Westfield State College observe: “The environment in
which police officers work offers unlimited opportunities for corruption and
deceit, and these environmental factors may lead to sociopathic behavior.”
“The extent to which police officers may abuse their
authority seems limitless as does the extent fellow officers will go to protect
each other,” they continue. “The loyalty and `brotherhood’ of the police that
appeals to so many has caused many officers to neglect their primary duty: to
protect and serve.”
Dangling at the end of that sentence is an unspecified
direct object: To protect and serve what, or whom? The “primary duty” of police
is to their “brotherhood,” not the public at large, Griffin and Ruiz explain,
because “as time goes by, police begin to view the public as their enemies and
this causes their antisocial behavior to increase.”
Police “work” acts as a reverse alembic, refining the worst
personality elements of those who engage in it. In his
1988 study “Personality Characteristics of Supercops and Habitual Criminals”
(Journal of Police Science and Administration, Vol. 16, pp. 163-167), G.C.
Reming found that the behavioral characteristics of police officers who “distinguish
themselves by their sustained high productivity” – as measured in
self-initiated felony arrests – were indistinguishable from those found among
habitual criminals.
This should surprise nobody: Both of those groups consist of
people who consider themselves licensed to use aggressive violence and
selectively exempt from the laws governing lesser people.
Slager wasn’t a “supercop”; he was a perfectly ordinary
patrol officer behaving in accordance with the professional standards of the
department that employed him. His was the routine, everyday sociopathy of
contemporary law enforcement.
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