A white police officer in South Carolina has been charged with murder after a cell phone video, said to have been taken by a bystander, appears to show the officer shooting to death a black man who was unarmed and fleeing. “Video is very transparent,” William “Tony” Farrar, a California police chief and co-author of a study on the effectiveness of body cameras, told The New York Times. In this case, the video shows North Charleston, S.C., patrolman Michael Slager, who is white, making physical contact with a black man, identified as Walter Scott. Suddenly Scott turns and takes off running, his back to Slager.

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