Blacks blame shooting on police indifference to complaints

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. — There is almost nothing in Michael Thomas Slager’s police personnel file to suggest that his bosses considered him a rogue officer capable of shooting an unarmed man in the back. People in the community he served said Thursday that this is precisely the problem: Officers rarely face consequences when citizens complain.

In his five years with the North Charleston Police, supervisors consistently gave positive performance reviews to the officer now jailed for murder in the shooting of an unarmed black man who in the back. Slager had claimed self-defense, but he was swiftly charged and fired this week after the dead man’s family released a bystander’s video showing him shooting Walter Lamer Scott eight times as he ran away.

Slager’s file includes one excessive use-of-force complaint: A man said Slager used his stun gun against him without reason in 2013. But the case was closed, exonerating Slager, even though witnesses told The Associated Press that investigators never followed up with them.

As a steady crowd left flowers, stuffed animals, notes and protest signs Thursday in the empty lot where Scott was gunned down, many people in South Carolina’s third-largest city said police routinely dismiss their complaints of harsh treatment, even when eyewitnesses are available to attest to police misbehavior.