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The Universe – John Brockman

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The Universe

Leading Scientists Explore the Origin, Mysteries, and Future of the Cosmos

John Brockman

Genre: Astronomy

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: July 8, 2014

Publisher: Harper Perennial

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


John Brockman brings together the world's best-known physicists and science writers—including Brian Greene, Walter Isaacson, Nobel Prize-winner Frank Wilczek, Benoit Mandelbrot, and Martin Rees—to explain the universe in all wondrous splendor. In The Universe, today's most influential science writers explain the science behind our evolving understanding of the universe and everything in it, including the cutting edge research and discoveries that are shaping our knowledge. Lee Smolin reveals how math and cosmology are helping us create a theory of the whole universe. Benoit Mandelbrot looks back on a career devoted to fractal geometry. Neil Turok analyzes the fundamental laws of nature, what came before the big bang, and the possibility of a unified theory. Seth Lloyd investigates the impact of computational revolutions and the informational revolution. Lawrence Krauss provides fresh insight into gravity, dark matter, and the energy of empty space. Brian Greene and Walter Isaacson illuminate the genius who revolutionized modern science: Albert Einstein. And much more. Explore the universe with some of today's greatest minds: what it is, how it came into being, and what may happen next.

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The Universe – John Brockman

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“He Killed a Man by Shooting the Man in the Back Cold-Bloodedly. The Country Isn’t Going to Bow Down.”

Mother Jones

Walter Scott in his Coast Guard days Courtesy of the Scott family

By now, you’ve probably heard that former North Charleston, South Carolina, police officer Michael Slager pleaded guilty on Tuesday afternoon to federal charges of using excessive force and violating the civil rights of Walter Scott in a police shooting that became national news. The big remaining questions are why Slager did so, and how much time he is likely to spend in prison. “It’s murder, regardless of what people think,” Ed Bryant, president of the local NAACP chapter, told reporters outside the courthouse.

Only a life sentence for Slager would be just, Bryant said: “The whole world has seen that. They know what he’s done. He killed a man by shooting the man in the back cold-bloodedly. The country isn’t going to bow down to that. No way.”

Five months ago, a Charleston jury failed to reach a unanimous verdict in Slager’s murder trial—a trial I covered for Mother Jones as part of an in-depth story on the lives of the officer and his victim, the state of police training in America, and the obstacles to convicting cops for the questionable shootings we see so often in the headlines. Here’s a scene from the Slager-Scott confrontation:

The officer returned to his cruiser intending to run Scott’s license through an FBI database, standard procedure. Scott stepped out of his vehicle and then climbed back in when Slager, sitting in his squad car, instructed him to do so. But moments later, Scott got out a second time and ran toward an open field, the site of an abandoned trailer park, and onto a painted asphalt path known locally as the Yellow Brick Road. Slager pursued on foot, warning that he was preparing to fire his stun gun: “Taser! Taser! Taser!” Scott didn’t stop, so Slager hit him with two darts.

The electricity brought Scott to his knees, but he refused to surrender. Slager then “drive-stunned” Scott—put the business end of the Taser directly on him and pulled the trigger—but could not cuff him. The men scuffled on the ground, and a winded Slager pleaded for backup. “One-five-six,” he said into his radio, calling out the badge number of the officer he knew was closest. “Step it up!”

Scott managed to break free and run away in a slow, wobbly gait. This time Slager did not give chase. He unholstered his .45-caliber Glock, took a stance, and put his left hand underneath to steady the weapon. His form was perfect, like in a training video. The only problem was that his gun was aimed at the back of a fleeing man. He squeezed off eight quick shots.

Local prosecutors in South Carolina were scheduled to retry Slager in August, but instead, as part of what is called a “global plea agreement” they agreed to drop the state charges in exchange for a guilty plea in the federal case. Slager, who will be sentenced at a later date, faces up to life in prison, but he will likely get far less. There is no mandatory minimum sentence. And, as I wrote in my prior story, the average sentence for officers convicted of murder or manslaughter over the past decade or so has been less than four years. Slager was led away after the hearing today in handcuffs. His lawyer, Andrew Savage III, said in a written statement, “We hope that Michael’s acceptance of responsibility will help the Scott family as they continue to grieve their loss.”

While reporting my story about the case, I toured the police academy where Slager was trained—for 9 weeks, as opposed to the 26 required of an NYPD officer. Inferior training was a key element of Slager’s defense. And while much of the instruction I witnessed seemed thoughtful enough, there was simply too little of it.

A report issued in March 2016 by the Police Executive Research Forum argued that misguided training—specifically, instruction that teaches officers to “draw a line in the sand” and resolve confrontations quickly—contributes directly to problematic shootings by police. Cops in training spend a median of 58 hours on firearms proficiency but just 8 hours learning de-escalation tactics to bring episodes to peaceful conclusions, according to PERF’s research. The mechanics of firing a weapon are usually taught separately from the question of when to use it.

Savage, Slager’s lawyer, had talked to prosecutors from the start about a possible deal, but they had not been able to agree on the length of a term. Although a judge will impose the sentence, Slager’s defense team and prosecutors most likely will have agreed to a sentence the government will recommend—those terms were not made clear on Tuesday. Before the deal was finalized, the government also contacted the family of Walter Scott to ascertain what penalty—if any—they would consider just. The plea deal, which you can read here, says Slager understands that the government will advocate he be sentenced under the guidelines applied to second-degree murder, the equivalent of manslaughter.

Tuesday’s plea arrangement represents a stark reversal in Slager’s account of what occurred on April 4, 2015, the day he fired eight shots at the unarmed Scott, from behind, as Scott fled. The shooting was caught on video by a bystander and viewed millions of times on the internet. Slager testified late last year that Scott was getting the better of him in a fight and he feared for his life. He told investigators initially that Scott had gained control of his Taser, though the video cast that story into grave doubt. The plea agreement states:

“The defendant used deadly force even though it was objectively unreasonable under the circumstances. The defendant acknowledges that his actions were done willfully, that he acted voluntarily and intentionally and with specific intent to do something that the law forbids.”

Philip Stinson, a criminologist at Ohio’s Bowling Green University who has done extensive research on police-involved shootings, says Slager could have decided to plead guilty for a variety of reasons. The first is that federal charges against officers who shoot and kill civilians tend to be easier to prove—though it is notoriously difficult to convict a police officer in an on-duty shooting. “His defense team may have realized the Justice Department had a good case,” Stinson says. “But it could also be that the defendant exhausted his capital in many ways, not just financial, but in terms of family considerations. He may have wanted closure.”

Slager’s lawyer took the case pro bono, and after the trial last fall said he had provided a defense that would have cost more than $1 million had he billed for it. Stinson points out that one calculation of pleading to federal rather than the state charges is the quality of the respective correctional facilities: “He may end up in a prison that is more tolerable than what would have been the case in South Carolina.”

One reason it is so difficult to convict police officers is that their jobs are, in fact, often dangerous. Police and their defense teams can effectively persuade juries that, even if they made an error in judgment, they reasonably feared for their lives. One thing that made the Slager case different—and the hung jury in the first trial so shocking to many—is that the cellphone video recorded by Feidin Santana, a 23-year-old Dominican immigrant on his way to work as a barber, seemed to show a clearly egregious act.

“I don’t get surprised by much,” said criminologist Philip Stinson, “but that video took my breath away.”

Slager was not under imminent threat. After the shooting, he appeared to plant evidence by retreating to where the scuffle had taken place to retrieve his Taser and then placing it beside Scott’s prone body. Slager described a different sequence of events in the hours after the shooting, but more recently he has testified that he has no memory at all of those interviews with investigators.

His memory loss could be viewed as a calculated strategy. Or, alternatively, as an indication of a defendant who was not in the best of mental states to withstand a new trial and, as he did in the state court, testify on his own behalf.

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“He Killed a Man by Shooting the Man in the Back Cold-Bloodedly. The Country Isn’t Going to Bow Down.”

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Ivanka Trump Will Become an Official Federal Employee

Mother Jones

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Amid mounting ethical concerns about Ivanka Trump’s already central role in her father’s administration, the first daughter made this announcement today: She will become an official federal government employee, specifically a “special assistant” to President Donald Trump.

The New York Times reports the the decision to take the unpaid position stems from questions over her original role as an informal adviser. Critics contended the position allowed her to bypass ethics rules typically required of federal employees.

“I have heard the concerns some have with my advising the president in my personal capacity while voluntarily complying with all ethics rules, and I will instead serve as an unpaid employee in the White House office, subject to all of the same rules as other federal employees,” Ivanka Trump said in a statement.

The announcement comes just hours after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) penned a letter asking Office of Government Ethics director Walter Shaub to address the issue.

“Ms. Trump’s increasing, albeit unspecified, White House role, her potential conflicts of interest, and her commitment to voluntarily comply with relevant ethics and conflicts of interest laws have resulted in substantial confusion,” the letter read.

Here’s a newly-relevant New Yorker story detailing Ivanka Trump’s role in assisting her father’s shady Iranian hotel deal.

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Ivanka Trump Will Become an Official Federal Employee

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Mistrial Appears Likely in Murder Trial of South Carolina Cop Who Killed a Fleeing, Unarmed Suspect

Mother Jones

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It appears likely that Judge Clifton Newman will be compelled to declare a mistrial in the racially charged South Carolina murder trial of former North Charleston police officer Michael Slager, who fatally shot an unarmed man who had fled from an April 2015 traffic stop. Late Friday afternoon, a lone juror sent a letter to the judge saying that he or she could not, in good conscience, vote to convict Slager of murder or manslaughter. The judge sent word asking the jurors to clarify whether that meant they were hopelessly deadlocked. The jurors responded that they were, but the prosecutor requested that the jurors receive further instruction, if need be, and the jurors expressed a willingness to deliberate further. In the meantime, the judge has sent jurors home for the weekend.

A viral bystander video showed Slager, who is white, shooting 50-year-old Walter Scott, who is black, multiple times from behind. Posted online soon after the incident, the video thrust the Charleston area into the national debate on race and the use of deadly force by police.

What the video didn’t show is the preceding tussle during which, Slager testified, Scott had defied his orders and tried to grab the Taser he was deploying. After Scott broke free and ran away, Slager took aim and fired. Slager said he was in a state of “total fear” and believed Scott remained a threat to him, even though he was running away.

Earlier on Friday, the jurors told Newman they were deadlocked in their attempt to reach a verdict, and the judge—who had given them the option of a lesser verdict of manslaughter—sent them back to try again. Over two days of deliberations, the jury twice asked the judge for assistance. They asked for transcripts of Slager’s courtroom testimony and that of the officer who interviewed Slager after the shooting. They also asked Newman to clarify the legal distinction between “fear” and “passion.” The judge responded that they would have to make that determination themselves.

Many observers have taken note of the racial imbalance of the jury: six white men, five white women, and one black man. No matter which way it goes, the verdict has to be unanimous. A jury foreman’s note that accompanied the letter from the holdout juror noted there was only one juror who “had issues” with convicting the officer.

A hung jury would probably be good news for Slager and his defense team. The prosecutor, 9th Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson, would have to decide whether to pursue a new trial and on what charge. She announced in court that she would first want to interview jurors to gather insights before making further decisions on resolving the case. It’s also possible Slager could head off a second trial by pleading to a lesser charge in exchange for a short prison stint—a manslaughter sentence in South Carolina ranges from two to thirty years without parole. But involuntary manslaughter, for instance, carries a maximum sentence of five years.

This post has been updated.

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Mistrial Appears Likely in Murder Trial of South Carolina Cop Who Killed a Fleeing, Unarmed Suspect

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"Sharks Are Pussies" and Other Survival Tips From Mary Roach

Mother Jones

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Mary Roach’s latest book, Grunt, looks at the weird yet deadly serious science of keeping soldiers alive. In a globe-trotting tour of labs, training grounds, and a nuclear sub, Roach explores how fighting men and women sweat, sleep, and poop—as well as the Pentagon’s efforts to defeat threats from improvised explosive devices to explosive diarrhea.

“No one wins a medal” for this obscure, often gross, survival research, Roach writes. “And maybe someone should.” Like her previous books Gulp and Stiff, Grunt oozes bodily fluids, flippant footnotes, and weapons-grade wordplay. I caught Roach at ease at her home base.

Mother Jones: Given your past subject matter—dead bodies, Elvis’ megacolon, sex in space—what brought you to the military?

Mary Roach: I came about it a little indirectly. I was reporting in India on the world’s hottest chili pepper and a horrific eating contest where people eat these peppers. I learned that the Indian Defense Ministry had made a nonlethal weapon like tear gas out of the world’s hottest chili pepper. So I went over to this military defense lab and interviewed them, and while I was there, I got this idea: “Military science is kind of more esoteric than you might think.”

MJ: This military research spans a huge range of topics, from weird stuff like stink bombs to survival stuff that keeps people alive. You mention a Navy researcher who made a breakthrough on the use of rehydration fluids to fight diarrhea, which someone hailed as “perhaps the most important medical advance of this century.” Which discoveries made by the military have had wider benefits for all of us?

MR: A lot of the vaccine work and things that are used to combat tropical diseases and illnesses that we don’t really think about day to day, like dysentery and diarrhea. Also repellents like permethrin for mosquitos, because we had soldiers in Vietnam getting bitten by creatures they don’t normally get bitten by here.

MJ: What seemed like the biggest boondoggle or waste of money?

MR: How about red-orange underwear? At the turn of the last century, there was this idea that the color red would somehow mitigate heat stress and make you better able to cope in tropical environments. There was this bizarre project where hundreds of pairs of red underwear and hats were shipped over to some troops in the Philippines. They used this heavy sort of dungaree cotton to make the underwear, which was really hot and not going to cool you down. And the dye didn’t stay. Needless to say, the red underwear didn’t keep anyone healthier or cooler.

MJ: Have you picked up any personal survival tips—anything you do to keep from getting sick, or to stay cool or not getting eaten by sharks?

MR: Somebody did this delightful study where they put guys in life rafts off a dock in Florida. They were looking into simple ways to improve survival, like wetting your shirt and putting it back on. Just having a wet shirt conserved body fluids; you’re not sweating nearly as much. In terms of repelling sharks, it depends on the kind of shark. But the thing that is reassuring is that for the most part, sharks are pussies, and they want to go after injured or dead prey. There was one study where a swimming rat kicked one in the nose and the shark was like, “I’m out of here!” Also, always go to the bathroom before you go into a life-or-death situation—that’s something a Special Operations soldier shared.

MJ: One tip that surprised me was that taking your shirt off when it’s hot actually makes things worse.

MR: Please, men, don’t take your shirts off! It makes sense; you’re getting a direct hit of solar radiation. Wear a loose white shirt, don’t take it off. If you get infected with maggots, leave them in. If you’re on a sinking submarine…well, that’s not really practical.

MJ: Don’t hold your breath if you’re escaping a submarine!

MR: Don’t hold your breath—breathe out. If you’ve managed to get out of the submarine, and you don’t have an escape suit, as you go up, breathe out. It’s so counterintuitive; I would want to hold onto my breath. There’s a great demonstration they do in submarine school where they take a Mylar bag from a wine box, blow it up, and let it go at the bottom of the training tank. It gets to the surface and it bursts. It’s a very graphic and memorable demonstration of why you shouldn’t hold your breath.

MJ: Among all the military jobs you observed, was there one where you thought, “that’s not for me”?

MR: What’s a gig that would really suck? The person who has garbage duty on a submarine—it’s kind of treacherous. They turn everything into a slurry, and they put it into canisters that they then shoot down from the bottom of the submarine to make sure that it doesn’t get hit by the propellers.

MJ: Was there a job you’d really want to do?

MR: I kind of thought the job of the chef in the insect kitchen at the insectary at Walter Reed Hospital was cool—cooking for insects and their larvae. It’s more fun to tell people than to do it, because some of the recipes include things like rabbit turds.

MJ: Did hanging out with soldiers and researchers change any misconceptions you had about the US military?

MR: I didn’t have any conception of this world at all. I didn’t realize that almost any of this existed—the Naval Submarine Medical Research Lab, or NAMRU Three or the Walter Reed Entomology Branch. That was all a surprise to me. I had maybe a misconception that everyone in the military was sort of hawkish. But in fact, the people who deal with the aftermath of war, trying to repair people’s bodies and minds, they are understandably quite anti-war. They’re not big boosters of war, particularly the people I talked to at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. Pathologists, people who have a real, day-after-day, graphic presentation of what war does to the body. I wasn’t really expecting that.

MJ: One of the interesting things about your book is how much effort the military spends on keeping people alive.

MR: There’s a tremendous amount of effort. At the very highest levels, you have to think about,”Why we do want them alive?” So that they can keep going and finish the job. But the people who do the research are not doing it for that reason. They’re doing it because they actually care. They know a lot of these people. They were these people.

MJ: Which bodily fluid freaks you out the most?

MR: Let’s see, I’m going through all of them in my head, it’s lovely! I think saliva, particularly un-stimulated saliva, the mucous-y kind. I find that pretty gross. Then again, it doesn’t smell. There was a moment in this book where there was a power outage at a lab and in the freezer there were a lot of diarrhea samples that thawed. But taking away smell, I’m going to go with saliva.

MJ: The thing that surprised me the most about this book is that you went to Djibouti to research diarrhea and you didn’t make a “booty” joke.

MR: Because I’m so mature and sophisticated that it never even crossed my mind. Something in me just stopped me from going there. That’s rare for me. I don’t often have that internal gatekeeper.

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"Sharks Are Pussies" and Other Survival Tips From Mary Roach

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Here’s Your Reminder Donald Trump’s Two Sons Are Also Big Game Hunters

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday, an American dentist admitted to paying $50,000 to hunt and kill Cecil the lion, a beloved animal and popular tourist attraction in Zimbabwe. News of the killing sparked swift condemnation on social media, with many calling for Walter Palmer to be extradited to Zimbabwe to stand trial.

Amid the outrage, photos quickly resurfaced of Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, posing with the dead bodies of several exotic animals, including an African elephant and leopard, they had previously hunted for sport.

When the photos initially emerged online back in 2012, the Trump brothers staunchly defended themselves, taking to Twitter to “make no apologies.”

“In some parts its over populated. Bottom line with out hunters $ there wouldn’t be much left of africa. Eco is nice but no $,” one tweet from Trump Jr. read.

The public reminder is just the latest relic in Trump’s past to stir controversy. This week alone, the New York Times dug up a series of depositions in which the GOP frontrunner for president once told a female lawyer she was “disgusting” for pumping milk for her then three-year-old daughter. The day prior, the Daily Beast published a story resurfacing an old assertion from his former wife claiming he had once raped her.

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Here’s Your Reminder Donald Trump’s Two Sons Are Also Big Game Hunters

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division released the dashcam footage of the moments leading up to officer Michael Slager’s fatal shooting of Walter Scott. It opens with Slager following Scott, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz, into a parking lot. They stop, then Slager walks up to Scott’s window, asks for his license and registration, and informs him that he was pulled over because of a broken brake light. Slager returns to his car. Moments later, Scott opens his door and runs away. A chase ensues, culminating in Slager firing eight shots and killing Scott.

In the aftermath of Scott’s death, little attention has been paid to fact that it was precipitated by a traffic stop. But Scott certainly wasn’t the first such encounter to go wrong: Both of the two other fatal police shootings in South Carolina over the past year that led to criminal charges also began with traffic stops. One was for a suspected DUI. The other was for a busted tail light.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Have to Pay a Dime in Damages


Philadelphia Cops Shoot and Kill People at 6 Times the Rate of the NYPD


Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men


Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill


Hereâ&#128;&#153;s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People

A search of news reports from the past decade turns up several other fatal police encounters that began with traffic stops: The deaths of Julio Eddy Perez in Los Angeles in 2008, DeCarlos Moore in Miami in 2010, Noel Polanco in New York City in 2012, Jerame Reid in New Jersey in 2014, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles in 2014, and David Kassick in Pennsylvania this February. (A 1976 traffic stop that nearly killed a black man prompted the Supreme Court to review—and approve—police officers’ use of chokeholds.)

So how often do traffic stops turn into police shootings? The short answer is that we don’t know. But there’s compelling evidence that black drivers are disproportionately likely to get pulled over. The Department of Justice’s 2011 Public-Police Contact Survey reported that black and Hispanic drivers were pulled over, ticketed, and searched at higher rates than whites. (It also found that cops used physical force against about 1 percent of drivers pulled over at traffic stops, but didn’t specify the drivers’ race.)

In 2014, three sociologists at the University of Kansas surveyed more than 2,300 drivers in and around Kansas City. They discovered that while stops over traffic safety violations showed little racial disparity, when it came to stops related to minor violations, like expired license plate stickers, black drivers were pulled over twice as often.

These “investigatory stops” provided what Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie describes as a “pretext for something more sinister”:

In these, drivers are stopped for exceedingly minor violations—driving too slowly, malfunctioning lights, failure to signal—which are used as pretext for investigations of the driver and the vehicle. Sanctioned by courts and institutionalized in most police departments, investigatory stops are aimed at “suspicious” drivers and meant to stop crime, not traffic offenses. And as the authors note, “virtually all of the wide racial disparity in the likelihood of being stopped is concentrated in one category of stops: discretionary stops for minor violations of the law.”

The difference between the two kinds of stops is dramatic. Where traffic safety stops are mostly painless (other than tickets), investigatory stops involve searches, impromptu interrogations, and occasionally handcuffs and weapons.

That Walter Scott was driving a Mercedes may not have helped. As the University of Kansas researchers found, an African-American man under 40 had a 36 percent chance of getting pulled over for an investigatory stop in a given year if he drove a domestic luxury car—versus 21 percent for if he drove a non-luxury car. (Scott was 50.)

And there’s a growing body of research showing that implicit bias likely played a role in Slager’s split-second decision to shoot Scott. But as Bouie points out, racial bias is hardly relevant when it comes to the traffic stop that started their encounter. “What matters is that this universal suspicion is baked into the culture of police departments across the country, such that all kinds of officers—black as well as white—engage in profiling”—an unknown number of which have turned lethal. And so long as that culture persists, Chris Rock’s selfies will keep coming.

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

Mother Jones

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A white police officer in South Carolina was arrested and charged with murder on Tuesday, after a shocking video emerged showing him fatally shooting an unarmed black man attempting to flee from the scene. The video, which was first published in the New York Times, captures the lethal confrontation between Officer Michael Slager and Walter Scott that quickly ensued during a traffic stop, which included Slager firing eight shots at Scott.

Slager originally told police that Scott had stolen his Taser and attempted to use it against him. This narrative was largely accepted by police authorities, at least according to what they initially told local media. The first report of the fatal encounter reported by the Post and Courier on Saturday ran with the headline, “Man shot and killed by North Charleston police officer after traffic stop; SLED investigating”:

An officer’s gunfire disrupted a hazy Saturday morning and left a man dead on a North Charleston street.

Police in a matter of hours declared the occurrence at the corner of Remount and Craig roads a traffic stop gone wrong, alleging the dead man fought with an officer over his Taser before deadly force was employed.

The officer’s account, witness statements and other evidence gathered from the scene are now the subject of a State Law Enforcement Division investigation to determine whether the shooting, the state’s 11th this year involving a lawmen, was justified.

A statement released by North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said a man ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in an attempt to stop him.

That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and attempted to use it against the officer.

The description reads eerily similar to police deaths that occur all around the country. If it had not been for the video’s eventual publication, it’s easy to imagine this being the press’ final narrative of how Scott died. Oftentimes, newspapers struggle to report anything more than what law enforcement agencies tell them.

In the case of the Post and Courier’s first story, the paper’s note that “in a matter of hours” police were quick to label the incident nothing more than a “traffic stop gone wrong” is revealing, as the video that has since surfaced clearly shows a very different account: Slager shoots Scott in the back multiple times; an object that appears to be Slager’s Taser is placed next to Scott’s body as he lays handcuffed on the ground.

It’s unclear when authorities became aware that a video of the incident existed, but on Monday, Slager appeared increasingly defensive. Speaking through an attorney, he doubled down on his actions to the same paper, saying he had “felt threatened” by Scott and needed to “resort to deadly force”:

A North Charleston police officer felt threatened last weekend when the driver he had stopped for a broken brake light tried to overpower him and take his Taser.

That’s why Patrolman 1st Class Michael Thomas Slager, a former Coast Guardsman, fatally shot the man, the officer’s attorney said Monday.

Slager thinks he properly followed all procedures and policies before resorting to deadly force, lawyer David Aylor said in a statement.

Monday’s developments filled in some of the blanks in what was South Carolina’s 11th police shooting of the year.

By Tuesday, the Times and the Post and Courier had obtained a bystander’s footage of the incident and the stories published that day are a direct about-face of the initial account, with both papers leading with news of the officer’s arrest and murder charge. The Post and Courier’s lead below:

A white North Charleston police officer was arrested on a murder charge after a video surfaced Tuesday of the lawman shooting eight times at a 50-year-old black man as the man ran away.

Walter L. Scott, a Coast Guard veteran and father of four, died Saturday after Patrolman 1st Class Michael T. Slager, 33, shot him in the back.

Five of the eight bullets hit Scott, his family’s attorney said. Four of those struck his back. One hit an ear.

In just a few days, the account’s drastic evolution in a single newspaper highlights yet again the problems surrounding police reporting—issues that have received national attention following recent events in Ferguson and New York City. Scott’s tragic death underscores the power video can bring to police accountability. As Scott’s family said during an appearance on the Today show Wednesday, this video helped an officer avoid a successful cover-up. “It would have never come to light,” Walter Scott Sr, Scott’s father, said. “They would have swept it under the rug, like they did with many others.”

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The Walter Scott Shooting Video Shows Exactly Why We Can’t Just Take the Police’s Word For It

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Chart: It’s Never Been a Better Time to Be Rich

Mother Jones

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We’ll be posting a new chart on the current state of income inequality every day for the next couple of weeks. Yesterday’s chart looked at how the richest of the rich have enjoyed massive income gains for decades.

But wait, you say, isn’t that the way it’s always been? Yes and no. It’s never been a bad time to be rich in America. But some times have been a lot better. In fact, the best time may be now, especially when you consider the amount of total income controlled by the top 1 percent since colonial times (with ancient Rome thrown in for comparison):

Sources: Rome: Walter Scheidel and Steven J. Friesen; US in 1774 and 1860: Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson; US in 1929-2012, Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty (Excel)

Illustrations and infographic design by Mattias Macklerâ&#128;&#139;

Original article – 

Chart: It’s Never Been a Better Time to Be Rich

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