Four South Carolina activist groups are urging North Charleston to create an independent body to oversee the implementation of the police audit's recommendations. The organizations, which include the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, the NAACP Legal Fund, Charleston's Black Lives Matter chapter and the ACLU, say public oversight is needed to ensure the city maximizes its ability to reduce racial disparities in the police department.
Nearly six years after Walter Scott was shot to death by a North Charleston police officer, the legal battle over the case and what consequences the officer, Michael Slager, should face isn't over.Â
At the time, Charleston’s activist community was tightly knit, its backbone local black pastors, including many who lived through the civil rights movement and strongly advocated nonviolent protest. But over the five years since, the face of the city’s activists has changed. So has their mood.
Four years after Charleston-area activists called for a racial bias audit of the North Charleston Police Department, the proposal has gained little traction with city leaders. Now, the NAACP and other groups say they're redoubling their efforts to see the project through.
Michael Slager, the former North Charleston police officer who fatally shot Walter Scott, has been assigned to a Colorado prison that also holds a corrupt Illinois politician and a disgraced former spokesman for Subway sandwiches, both of whom will likely be freed before him.
Nearly two months after learning his sentence for fatally shooting Walter Scott, former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager left the Charleston County jail on Friday morning. His next stop: a federal prison.
Feidin Santana, the bystander who filmed Walter Scott's death, was a more credible witness than the North Charleston police officer who shot Scott, a judge said Tuesday in a formal order that will send the former lawman to a federal prison.
Michael Slager, the former North Charleston policeman sentenced to 20 years in prison for Walter Scott's shooting death, indicated Wednesday his plans to appeal that punishment.
While Michael Slager's 20-year sentence has been viewed as a warning to other police officers faced with using their firearms in the line of duty, some observers doubt the lasting influence of a particularly stark example of excessive force like Walter Scott’s death.
We saw justice served on Thursday, but there was little to celebrate.
Two and a half years after millions saw a cellphone video of Michael Slager gunning down Walter Scott, the 20-year prison sentence he was handed Thursday will be etched into history as one of the most significant for an American police officer involved in a fatal shooting.
Walter Scott's youngest son asked a federal judge Wednesday to give the former North Charleston police officer who fatally shot his father the maximum sentence: life in prison.
Michael Slager’s defense team on Tuesday used evidence not allowed during his murder trial in an effort to convince a judge that the former North Charleston officer felt threatened when he fatally shot Walter Scott.
What Walter Scott did during his fatal confrontation with North Charleston officer Michael Slager and what the policeman said afterward quickly became the focus of the first day of Slager’s sentencing hearing.
Michael Slager’s loved ones recently saw the former North Charleston policeman in jail, and they left with his clothes.
In early December, exactly a year after a jury deliberated and failed to find him guilty of a crime in Walter Scott’s death, former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager will stand as a convicted felon in a courtroom across the street.
A letter from a New York-based civil rights group has urged North Charleston’s mayor and police chief to push for the completion and release of a federal review of the city's police force when they meet with Washington officials next week.
The Justice Department has denied an open-records request for a report about North Charleston police despite an intensifying chorus of voices from South Carolina and Washington calling for its release.
Staking a public claim to a yearlong assessment of North Charleston police, local civil rights advocates demanded the review's release, despite the federal government's decision to abandon the effort.
As complaints about police tactics in North Charleston accumulated over the years, calls mounted for an independent inquiry into whether the fight against rising violence had come at a cost to residents' civil rights.
With former North Charleston officer Michael Slager on the verge of learning how much longer he will stay behind bars for shooting Walter Scott, authorities have scuttled a broader push for police reform ignited by the killing.
Charleston's top prosecutor said the police shooting of Walter Scott was a "close call" between murder and manslaughter but that a case could be made for either crime.
Just a month after controversy erupted over police accounts of Walter Scott’s death, Charleston County sheriff’s officials faced possible backlash about why one of their own deputies had shot a man in his home, leaving him paralyzed.
Days after a former North Charleston officer pleaded guilty in Walter Scott’s death, a billboard voicing support for police popped up more than a mile from the shooting site.
Michael Slager now sits in jail as a convicted felon, much like the person who occupied his cell before him. But unlike Dylann Roof, the mass killer whose death sentence was broadly expected, Slager's fate will remain a mystery until a judge decides it.
Former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty Tuesday to violating Walter Scott’s civil rights by shooting the fleeing black man five times — a sudden shift after insisting for two years he had gunned down Scott in self-defense.
The former North Charleston police officer who was filmed shooting Walter Scott to death is expected to appear Tuesday afternoon for a final hearing before his civil rights trial.
What experts and North Charleston police officers can say during a civil rights trial about former lawman Michael Slager's memory lapses will be discussed during a hearing next week, according to court documents filed Thursday.
Michael Slager can't remember the account he gave during an interview in which he's accused of lying about Walter Scott's shooting death, the former North Charleston policeman testified Monday.
Lawyers representing former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager called the case's prosecutor and original defense attorney to the stand for questioning in federal court Friday.
With more than two weeks until former North Charleston policeman Michael Slager's civil rights trial, attorneys will discuss unresolved motions during a hearing Friday in Charleston.
While local officials said Tuesday that an examination of North Charleston’s police force remains on track, it's unclear whether a new U.S. Department of Justice mandate will affect the reform effort.
Walter Scott's relatives have no public events planned for the anniversary, family attorney Chris Stewart said. Instead, Stewart added, the ones most affected by the shooting are focused on one thing in the coming year: getting a conviction of the former officer, Michael Slager.
An ongoing audit at the state's crime lab has revealed more than a year and a half of faulty testing of evidence in shootings, leaving attorneys across South Carolina to grapple with fallout that could disrupt prosecutions.
North Charleston's police force is rising from its darkest hour two years ago, when one of its own shot Walter Scott in the back, several longtime critics, supporters and residents said.
Two men jolted with a Taser by the same officer who killed Walter Scott will get $80,000 for dropping their lawsuits against North Charleston.
A government attorney said Friday that President Donald Trump's administration fully backs the prosecution of the former North Charleston policeman who shot Walter Scott.
Feidin Santana paid for his own flight to the U.S. to testify at Michael Slager's murder trial, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Correction: Court documents show that more than $6,600 was paid for various expenses related to witness Feidin Santana before and after the trial, not $19,000 as previously reported. The documents incorrectly listed some as "per diem," or per day, payments for certain time periods, which inf…
The top prosecutor pursuing a second trial of Michael Slager did not initially support a murder charge for the former policeman, his attorney said Tuesday.
Prosecutors responded Friday to a defense motion that called for the state's murder charge against Michael Slager to be dismissed.
Michael Slager's chief defense attorney said he met Friday with Department of Justice officials in Washington to critique how the civil rights case against the former policeman has played out, not to hash out an agreement to end it.
A lawyer for the North Charleston officer who shot Walter Scott repeated a call this week for an examination of whether the lawman's prosecution was sparked by a "rush to judgment" amid national furor over police practices.
For a second time, the former North Charleston policeman who shot Walter Scott has said he's too poor to pay for his own lawyer — a plea to free up public money for his defense as his second murder trial nears.
Attorneys on both sides of Michael Slager’s upcoming civil rights trial filed a series of motions Friday aimed at framing the arguments that will be made in federal court this spring.
Prosecutors should not be allowed to retry Michael Slager for murder because a jury had apparently acquitted him of that crime in his first trial, his attorney said Thursday.
Asserting that testimony about Michael Slager's Taser during his murder trial was wrong, his attorneys have asked for another independent examination of the stun gun.
The focus of efforts to prosecute the North Charleston policeman who shot Walter Scott shifted Tuesday to federal court after a judge delayed his retrial in a state murder case.
