The Walter Scott Shooting

by Pat Brown

I recently appeared on CNN to talk about the Walter Scott case and a lot of people are angry over what I said or what I was trying to say. The host of the show had her own agenda of what she wanted me to talk about and kept trying to cut me off, so I lacked the time to present a complete analysis. Some have called me a shill which, if anyone has followed me for any length of time, they know I always just say what I think and I do not speak on behalf of any "side" or organization. I don't have an agenda except for the truth and keeping things in perspective and not going on some campaign outside of the issue of crime scene analysis, to be objective and not subjective, to explain what is the issue facing prosecution and defense, and not to score brownie points with anyone.

Let me break down what happened with this appearance, what I was saying, and why I have been so misinterpreted by a number of people who are sending hate mail and making hate phone calls.

My job as a profiler is to analyze the known evidence and the totality of the known evidence. Prior to the show, I gave a pre-interview discussing what I was going to say, how I wanted to specifically point out that the whole issue comes down to was whether Michael Slager had a right to shoot Walter Scott, to pull the trigger, and how this is what was going to have to be decided in court. I was under the impression I was going to be on the show alone and not on a panel. I was never told we were going to be including another police incident on the show and that the show focus was not going to be on the Scott case but on police brutality and overuse of force.

When it came my turn to talk, I was asked a question by the host about the Slager's demeanor after the shooting. I chose not to talk about that in isolation because it is meaningless in isolation and, in reality, has little to do with his guilt or innocence. His guilt or innocence lies in exactly the point I kept trying to make on the show; was he justified in pulling the trigger or not. The only evidence that matters is what happened THAT day from the time Slager and Scott came in contact. EVEN if he had a history of overuse of force (which has not been proven in spite of the ex-policewoman said on the show; so far just one complaint in six years) and EVEN if he danced a jig after he shot Scott down. EVEN if he planted evidence (which has not been clearly proven) after the fact because we don't know if that would have been done because there he knew there was NO justification for the shooting or because he was so in shock that he panicked and thought he needed to add justification because he was scared that he wouldn't be believed. Believe me, the last thing cops want is to have to shoot someone because that means suspension and investigation and possible loss of the career one worked so hard to get. In fact, most police officers never fire their service weapon in their entire years onthe  force. But, again, all of this is not the issue. All that matters is, when Slager pulled the trigger, did he have a reasonable belief that if he failed to do so, he would be killed in the next few moments or someone else would be killed in the next few moments. Slager has now to prove in court that the EVENTS LEADING UP TO HIS DECISION where such that he was justified in shooting Scott.

This is why I attempted to take the viewers back to what happened prior to the shooting. What I said on the show was up to the end of the altercation, there is nothing to suggest Slager was not doing his job properly. He was polite at the traffic stop. He went back to his vehicle to do his check. Scott then acted improperly, fleeing the scene. Slager pursed and caught up with him. Scott resisted arrest. Even after being tased, he was not complying. He fought with police officer and again fled the scene. All of this shows Slager was dealing with someone who was acting in a violent and criminal manner.

So far, Slager appears to be in the right. Then, comes the end of the tussle and the taser issue which is a bit unclear. What exactly happened with the taser, who had it when, when was it dropped. I preferred not to get into this because it will take quite a bit of analysis to come as close as possible to what truly happened and this is the crux of the case that the prosecution and the defense will battle over. Then, when that is sorted out best as possible, the next issue is at exactly what range did Slager shoot Scott and is there any good reason, considering all the elements and evidence up to the point of pulling the trigger, that Slager or anyone else in his place have to shoot Scott down as he ran? Reasons in the mind of an officer in this situation that might be defensible would be 1) at the time he went to fire, he thought Scott had the taser and could turn and fire on him, incapacitating him, and, thereby allowing him to access his police weapon, or 2) that he thought Scott had a second weapon and could turn and fire and fire on him. One has to keep in mind that all events leading up to such a moment become extremely condensed in and heightened in the human mind which is why a split second decision can be hard to understand in retrospect. Slager might have thought Scott was closer than he was when he shot, thought Scott was more threatening (a taser didn't take him down), was terrified Scott had a hidden weapon, would take a few steps, spin around and kill him. THIS is what he has to prove to a jury if he doesn't want to spend his life in prison for pulling that trigger.

The other scenarios as to why Slager may have shot Scott could be that he was pissed Scott was going to make him run again or Scott had bested him and was going to maybe get away. Maybe Slager is a control freak who doesn't like losing. THIS is what the prosecution has to prove, that none of the events leading up to the moment of pulling the trigger justified Slager in believing that he had the right to shoot Scott.

Television can be a strange animal, especially in a short panel situation. While I was trying to make this point, I had little time to speak and was not allowed to get a thorough statement out. Meanwhile, what I was hearing from the panel were broad negative brushes about law enforcement and assumptions and hearsay. All of this type of discussion does nothing but emotionalize the situation and fuel anger. I was trying to get people to look at the incident itself, in isolation from some bigger political or personal agenda, and allow ALL the evidence to be gathered and presented in court.

There are bad cops out there; some officers have control issues, some love power, some love the hell out of weapons, some are racist, some are assholes. Guess what? Same is true for the teaching profession, the medical profession, etc. While departments need to do the best job they can hiring, the best they can in firing problem officers, the best they can in running their department in as ethical and pro-community as they can, sometimes a portion of the employees just aren't the greatest. I have spoken out quite strongly against certain officers and departments during my life, against incompetence and corruption. We all should but we shouldn't become irrational with anger without evidence to back it. Right off the bat with this case, we had the racism issue go full force simply because the officer was white and the victim was black. Yet, when the dash-cam video came out, that rage has softened a bit because we did not see a cop acting in a racist manner. The argument seemed to change to police brutality and overuse of force. I say, let's make sure we thoroughly understand the whole event properly before we decide if there is a political issue to make of this or just possibly a poor decision made by one lone individual.

The media needs to stop whipping up emotions based on a lot of junk reporting and hyperbole. It needs to start being responsible for what it prints and airs. And, as for us American citizens, let's not take on a lynching mentality. Let's discuss issues civilly and, when it comes down to cases like this, allow some time for the evidence to be gathered and understood and  let the outcome be decided in court.


Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

May 12, 2016

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It's Official: Gustav Looters GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL (Not to Angola Prison)

by Vanessa Leggett

Most of us know better than to believe everything we see on TV. But when an official makes an emergency announcement during a press conference televised worldwide, we pay attention, as we should. And we tend to accept such statements as fact.

As Hurricane Gustav churned toward the Gulf Coast over the weekend, I caught a press conference on CNN.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin had important announcements to make. This was the third time in as many years that Mayor Nagin found himself addressing a panicked public trying to recover from or prepare for cataclysmic hurricanes: first Katrina (looter pictured above), then Rita, and now Gustav. “This is the Storm of the Century,” the mayor proclaimed on Saturday.

"The Storm of the Century"

Big storms call for big words. And Mayor Nagin was full of them. A mandatory evacuation had been ordered in anticipation of a Category 4 hurricane. The mayor had a warning for anyone who did not follow orders to evacuate: Watch out for flying mobile homes. Trailers would become “projectiles,” he said, and would “start to fly around the city.”

He also had a warning for crooks planning to take advantage of the city-wide evacuation. "Anybody who is caught looting in New Orleans will be brought directly to Angola,” he said, repeating himself: "Directly to Angola."

This statement hit me harder than the one about trailers hurtling through the city, which Nagin said to expect as "a matter of fact," though it sounded more like the movie Twister than reality. I remembered the devastation Katrina brought, however, so I was prepared to believe in flying trailers.

I was not ready to accept that the Constitution would be thrown to the wind as well—that police would pluck looters from the streets of New Orleans and haul the accused to Louisiana's Death Row. If cows could fly in Twister, BS could fly in a press conference. Nothing unrealistic about that. In fact, City Hall seemed as fitting a venue as any. But the mayor's message was broadcast worldwide.

“You will not have a temporary stay in the city," Mayor Nagin continued. "You’ll go directly to the Big House, in general population. You will go directly to Angola Prison. And God bless you when you go there."

Given New Orleans’ experience during the storms of 2005, cautioning would-be looters was called for—especially after Hurricane Katrina, when pilfering was so widespread that even uniformed members of law enforcement were filmed helping themselves to goods from a Wal-Mart.

I remember how stunned I had been to see police captured on tape, stealing in the storm-torn town they were sworn to protect. But I found Nagin's message even more shocking. Here was the Mayor of New Orleans making an official announcement, threatening thieves picking over others' belongings with a direct ticket to "general population" in the nation's largest maximum-security prison, the "Alcatraz of the South." It was unbelievable.

Maybe my personal background is what kept me from buying the threat. I'd taught corrections at a university and later did time in a maximum-security federal facility. You could say I know a thing or two about the prison system. My knowledge of how things are run on both sides of the bars did not square with Nagin's threat.
C.J. 101: Arrestees are detained in jails, not prisons. Penitentiaries house those who have been convicted of a crime, felons who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment.

The Mayor Has No Clothes

Traditionally, the responsibility of bringing such errors to public attention falls on the media. (Though it doesn’t always happen that way and results can be disastrous. Just ask former ambassador Joe Wilson.) Of course, the mainstream media might not be motivated to correct this type of inaccuracy, since it seemed to me at least that Nagin was using a scare tactic to force law and order. I'm guessing journalists with more practiced noses than mine at "smell test" reporting shared my initial reservation in bringing the error to the public's attention: Why let the thugs think otherwise? And there was a less honorable reason the press did not point a finger at Nagin to say there was not a thread of truth to the mayor's statement: some reporters never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

But after watching credible journalists like Wolf Blitzer perpetuate Nagin’s claim that looters would be sent directly to Angola, I started to wonder . . . Could it be true? Yet another report made me reconsider my initial impression. A New Orleans-based broadcast journalist interviewed by CNN echoed the cable network's reports that looters would be sent directly to the Big House. "They’re serious," he said, seeming, well, serious.

When in Louisiana . . .

OK. If a local reporter was backing up Nagin's claim, maybe these Louisianans were serious after all. The law in Louisiana is different from any other state in the country—and I’m not referring to the way it’s enforced, or that it’s sometimes not enforced. Louisiana operates under the Napoleonic Code.

I decided to check the statute, which I was not surprised to see had been revised since the storms of 2005:

"Whoever commits the crime of looting during the existence of a state of emergency . . . shall be imprisoned at hard labor for not less than three years nor more than fifteen years without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence."

The punishment seemed a bit harsh. For a property crime that could be as small as stealing a loaf of bread to keep from starving, sending someone to prison for a minimum 1,095 days approached the fiction of Les Misėrables. In New Orleans a few years ago, those who rode out Katrina truly were without survival essentials. In the looting footage cited above, the reporter at Wal-Mart asked one man if he was stealing from the store.

"We have no means of washed clothes or food, sure," he said, continuing shopping.

If Nagin's straight-to-prison threat became reality, what would happen to a victim who was without food, or a merchant to sell it to him? And what if an evacuating homeowner returned to pick up something left behind? What if, for example, a New Orleans P.D. officer didn't believe he really lived there? Should an innocent man go straight to prison? Would a teenager having fun in all the chaos by stealing a plastic pink flamingo from a neighbor's yard find himself in general pop at Angola?

Where in all this mess is a little thing called due process? As the Louisiana looting statute stands, at least three years prison would be mandatory for anyone found guilty of looting during an emergency. In addition to imprisonment, a fine would be subject to a judge's discretion. How could a monetary punishment be left up to a judge in a courtroom, but a man's life and liberty rest solely in the hands of an officer on the street?

As preposterous as the whole thing seemed to me, one phrase in the statute gave me pause. Looters would be “imprisoned at hard labor.” Angola, a.k.a. "The Farm," is perhaps the country’s most recognized hard labor prison. The acronym for Louisiana State Penitentiary stands for something else to the prison population, which knows L.S.P. as the “Last Slave Plantation.”

I did a quick fact tally. During a state of emergency, the law mandates "hard labor" as punishment for all looters. And Angola Prison is the state symbol for chain-gang labor. Maybe the mayor wasn’t off his rocker. Two years ago, Katrina looters had been dealt double-digit prison sentences for stealing booze from a store, to "send a message."

Louisiana does do things differently. And exigencies can similarly affect how laws are applied in any state. The Constitution makes due process exceptions during times of war or in cases arising out of "public danger." Insurance policies contain clauses addressing force majeure, or “acts of God,” which can change the rules.

More than a century ago, The New York Times ran a story days after the Great Storm of 1900, a Category 4 hurricane, which claimed more than 6,000 lives in another Gulf Coast community: Galveston, Texas. In the aftermath of that disaster, an insurance company spokesman was quoted as saying "The letter of the law will not be adhered to."

In 2005, one New Orleans cop looting the Wal-Mart had the same spirit. In that footage, a reporter asked an officer what was going on in the closed superstore. "Doing my job," the cop said, walking away from a basket of stolen goods. "Looking for looters."

Lessons from History

According to storm lore, on September 9, 1900, the day after the Great Storm made landfall on Galveston Island, literally thousands of corpses began rapidly decomposing in the Gulf Coast's relentless heat and humidity. On the small island, the stench of human remains and livestock carcases littering the landscape was unbearable. Survivors quickly decided to dump bodies at sea. Looters complicated efforts to ID the dead. Police caught one man whose pockets were stuffed with a couple of dozen gold rings, the owners’ fingers still attached. Ears and other body parts were severed for jewelry. More than thirty looters were dealt with Texas-style: the majority were shot to death, some on the spot.

Contra-flow of Information

Like Texas, Louisiana is a renegade state, but I still doubted Mayor Nagin's sincerity. I had to do a little independent investigation. I checked for official press releases restating the mayor's Angola warning, but found nothing.

Visiting the Louisiana State Penitentiary Web site, I did discover a public notice concerning the state prison system's "Preparation for Tropical Storm Gustav." The press release simply notified the public that visitation would be suspended. The L.S.P. posted the bulletin to inform and "assure the public that the prison is secure and public safety will be maintained through this emergency crisis." Nothing about Angola.

I e-mailed a request for more specific information regarding Mayor Nagin's comments. Here was the official response:

Post-evacuation and post-storm arrestees will be housed at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, not Louisiana State Penitentiary. . . .We are in the process of establishing court functions at EHCC for later in the week. More than likely, a judge will be appointed to hear cases from all parishes making arrests, instead of having a judge from each parish coming in and handling only that parish. We're still working out the details on that, but we did have some court hearings at EHCC after Hurricane Katrina so this is not unchartered territory.

Pam Laborde, the Communications Director for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, ended the statement with the typical courtesy: "Please let me know if you have any further questions."

I did. Perhaps I asked too many. Though she'd just confirmed, in so many words, that the mayor's claim had no clothes, I knew I had to press, specifically about Angola. And while Ms. Laborde's responses were helpful . . . it wasn't until I bore down on Angola, that I received the information I needed:

"Angola has nothing to do with this story," she wrote, "other than the fact that the mayor apparently gave incorrect information as to where arrestees would be taken."

The Mayor is Full of Hot Air ("Apparently")

I do understand that leaders have to make choices for the greater good of those they serve. And this would not be the first time or the last that a man in charge delivered deliberate misinformation for what he believed was in the better interest of his community.

Maybe Nagin's prevarication served its purpose. The mayor gave his "Mother of All Storms" warning Saturday night as mass evacuations were under way. As of Sunday morning, the New Orleans Police Department reported no arrests for looting. Then again, those reports came during the calm before the storm.

But should it ever be acceptable for an elected official to deliberately mislead his constituency? Does talk of projectile mobile homes and prison without due process (if spoken to secure the public's personal safety and property) rise to the level of yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater? I'm not sure.

But I have a problem with even the appearance that a person's Fifth Amendment rights can be gutted, even if the threat is ultimately empty. If that's what Mayor Nagin did, he abused the First Amendment.

On the other hand, I would support a citizen's right to push the free speech envelope. I appreciated this comment to an online news story restating the mayor's whopper. This reader had an even stronger notion of how looters could be deterred:

"Unless they drop [the property] immediately, shoot them. Tag them with signs saying, this was a looter."

Lesser of Two Disasters

Perhaps Nagin's greater good was served. But what will the repercussions be, considering his message was broadcast around the world? Might other countries wonder: Is that how America now deals with petty thieves? Hard-core prison without benefit of trial or so much as a hearing before a magistrate?

Early this morning, as the world waited for Gustav to make landfall, I was thankful to see CNN storm trooper Anderson Cooper wisely revising history. He seemed to fumble for words that wouldn’t take the wind out of the mayor’s threat, but would make the report closer to the truth.

“You will be taken directly to a local jail,” he said.

Anderson’s trademark squint seemed especially blinky. Perhaps it was the wind whipping his face. More likely, I think, is that Anderson realized what he’d just said on live television:

Looters will be confined in a jail within the city that Gustav is barreling toward, the "ghost town" that everyone else has evacuated.

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