Well they FINALLY got one! After years of false accusations on innocents, this one looks like it's going to stick. They got one! Why did this guy run from the cop? Because he was a dumb criminal, but that didn't give the cop the right to use 8 shots of lethal force. The only factor that will blunt the impact of this crime is the rapid response by authorities, charging the cop with murder right away. TM
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AP Story Apr 9, 2015
BY MITCH WEISS AND MICHAEL BIESECKER

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) -- The white South Carolina police officer charged with murder for shooting an unarmed black man in the back was allowed to stay on the force despite a 2013 complaint that he used excessive force against another unarmed black man.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Mario Givens recounted Wednesday how he was awakened before dawn one morning in September of that year by loud banging on the front door of his family's North Charleston home.

On his front porch was Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager, the white officer now charged in the shooting death of Walter Lamer Scott following a traffic stop over a broken taillight. The latest case of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man grabbed international attention this week after a dramatic cellphone video recorded by a bystander showed Slager firing eight times as Scott ran away.

The uproar over Scott's death comes amid a plunge in trust between law enforcement and minorities after the officer-involved killings of other men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner on Staten Island, New York, which have triggered nationwide protests. Cases involving white officers have fallen under particular scrutiny.

Givens, who is also black, said he cracked open his door and asked the officer what he wanted. At the time, Givens was clad only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, he recalled.

"He said he wanted to come in, but didn't say why," said Givens, now 33. "He never said who he was looking for."

Then, without warning, Slager pushed in the door, he said.

"`Come outside or I'll tase you,'" he recalled the officer saying as he burst in. "I didn't want that to happen to me, so I raised my arms over my head, and when I did, he tased me in my stomach anyway."

He said the pain from the stun gun was so intense that he dropped to the floor and began calling for his mother, who was also in the home. At that point, he said another police officer came into the house and they dragged him outside and threw him to the ground. He was handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car.

Though initially accused of resisting the officers, Givens was later released without charge.

"It was very devastating," said Bessie Givens, 57, who was awaked by her son's piercing screams. "You watch your son like that, he's so vulnerable. You don't know what's going to happen. I was so scared."

It turned out that the police officers had gone to the family's home at the behest of his brother's ex-girlfriend, who earlier reported awakening in her nearby house to find Matthew Givens in her bedroom, uninvited. She said he left when she began screaming, and she dialed 911.

That woman, Maleah Kiara Brown, told The AP in an interview on Wednesday that she and a friend had followed the police officers over to the Givens home and were sitting outside as Slager knocked on the door. The second officer had gone around to the back of the house.

She had provided the officers with a detailed description of Matthew Givens, who is about 5 feet, 5 inches tall. Mario Givens stands well over 6 feet.

"He looked nothing like the description I gave the officers," Brown said, referring to Mario Givens. "He asked the officer why he was at the house. He did it nicely. The police officer said he wanted him to step outside. Then he asked, `Why, why do you want me to step outside?' Then the officer barged inside and grabbed him."

Moments later, she saw the police officers drag Givens out of the house and throw him in the dirt. Brown said she kept yelling to the officers they had the wrong man, but they wouldn't listen. Though Givens was offering no resistance, she said she saw Slager use the stun gun on him again.

"He was screaming, in pain," she said. "He said, `You tased me. You tased me. Why?' It was awful. Terrible. I asked the officer why he tased him and he told me to get back."

She said she later told a female police supervisor what she had seen.

"He was cocky," she said of Slager. "It looked like he wanted to hurt him. There was no need to tase him. No reason. He was no threat - and we told him he had the wrong man."

Angered by what happened, Mario Givens went downtown to police headquarters the following day and filed a formal complaint. He and his mother say several neighbors who witnessed what happened on the family's front lawn also contacted the police, though they say officers refused to take their statements.

for more see:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/U...-04-09-03-33-29