Former NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly on Sunday called the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white South Carolina cop a “game changer” that has made him reverse his opposition to body cameras on officers.
Kelly had been skeptical about cops being fitted with cameras, claiming the devices might make the officers reluctant to take necessary, decisive action.
But Kelly said he rethought his position after shocking video emerged of Officer Michael Slager shooting Coast Guard veteran Walter Scott in the back after a traffic stop earlier this month in North Charleston, SC.
“It has changed my mind,” Kelly told ABC’s “This Week.” “Because we have to assume that this officer would not act the way he did if, in fact, he had a body camera that was recording.”
A passer-by who saw Slager and Scott grappling used his mobile phone to capture footage of the officer firing fatal shots into the driver’s back as Scott tried to run away.
“I think it is a game changer — and what you will see is a movement now by many more police departments to go to cameras,” Kelly said.
He spoke at about the same time the Rev. Al Sharpton took to the pulpit in North Charleston and praised that city’ s white mayor.
Sharpton, at the Charity Missionary Baptist Church during a memorial for Scott, said he appreciated Mayor Keith Summey embracing the black man as a “victim.”
“Maybe now, between a Southern white mayor and a forgiving black mother, maybe this nation will deal with this,” Sharpton said, according to The Post & Courier of Charleston, referring to Scott’s mother, Judy Scott.
Sharpton’s praise probably didn’t convince everyone in church.
“The mayor and the chief, they did what they had to do, because none of us are blind,” North Charleston resident Keith White, 60, said before services.
It took less than five minutes for Slager’s seemingly routine traffic stop of Scott on April 4 to end in tragedy.
Records showed that Slager radioed in at 9:33 a.m. to report that he was pulling over a green Mercedes-Benz.
The motorist, Scott, gave Slager documents the cop requested. Then Scott took off running and Slager told dispatchers at 9:36 a.m. that he was chasing a “black male, green shirt, blue pants.”
By 9:38, Slager radioed back to say, “Shots fired, subject down. He grabbed my Taser.”
Slager can then be heard laughing and telling a senior officer that his adrenaline was “pumping,” on an audio clip obtained by The Guardian.
With Post Wires