#RacialShame: Shocking Video Shows US Cop Chasing, Gunning Down His Black Victim

The young man who shot the cellphone video that exposed police mendacity and cover up in a South Carolina execution of a black man by a white cop surfaced on Wednesday, saying he was so frightened by what he had captured that he considered deleting the film and disappearing from the city. But when he heard the police lying about the sequence of events that led to a white officer Michael Slager shooting dead Walter Scott, a black man, Dominican immigrant Feidin Santana, a 23-year-old barber who captured the execution, said he decided the truth must come out. "I felt a need to look for justice," he said, in one of several media appearances, as he was toasted by civil liberties fraternity across the nation.

Even so, Santana said, he initially went to the cops themselves to disclose that he had the video. When he was asked to wait at the station, he decided to leave. He then got in touch with the victim's family and showed them the video that pretty much nailed police lies.

The explosive video has now become the centerpiece of a national conversation. But for the video, activists are now pointing out, the coldblooded slaying of an unarmed, defenseless black man would have gone the way of many other such killings that are routinely explained away by the mostly white police force. In fact, the white police officer in this case is South Carolina's third charged in the past year for killing an unarmed black man. according to the local media. This is also the 11th officer-involved shooting in South Carolina since the beginning of 2015. Michael Slater, 33, the officer in this case, has also been subject of prior excessive force complaints.

Still from the video

Everything points to such incidents of police brutality being fairly common, in South Carolina and elsewhere, with the one big difference in this case: it was captured on a cellphone video and gave the bystander perspective instead of the standard police perspective. In fact, the police dash cams does not show the shooting of Scott because officer Slager had chased him into an empty park away from his car after a traffic stop.

Scott's immediate fault was that he had a broken taillight on his car. But when he was pulled over, he fled because he feared arrest for a overdue child support payment for which a warrant was out for him. Nothing in his action merited being shot dead; he had no record of violent behavior and he posed no threat to the officer as he ran away from him. There was no warning by the officer for him to stop before he was shot in the back.

Even after the shooting, Officer Slager made no attempt to check on his wounds or give him first aid.

Expectedly, the killing has once again become a rallying point for black activists still seething over white police killings of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, New York, Cleveland and other places. White protectionists are also out spinning for Officer Slager, including raising funds for his defense. The meager collection on a crowdfunding website - $393 at the time of writing for a $5,000 goal - shows which way public sentiment lies. "MURDERER!!! Here's my $1. to say use it for the electric bill to fry that coward pig!" read one comment on the crowdfunding site.