After Walter Scott shooting, South Carolina protesters make slow progress

The first protests after Scott’s death were organized by the Charleston chapter of Black Lives Matter, an activist group that formed in December 2014 after a rash of police-involved deaths of African-Americans, including Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. In the week after the Scott shooting, the group started asking North Charleston officials to create a citizen oversight committee to review the actions of the police department, including its internal investigations of citizens’ complaints against officers. Similar oversight committees have existed in municipalities such as New York for decades.

The group’s proposal gained new relevance when the North Charleston Police Department released Slager’s records, revealing that he was accused of using a Taser on a nonsuspect while investigating a 2013 burglary. The alleged victim, Mario Givens, filed a complaint with the department, but the department exonerated Slager within a month without giving an explanation in its report. Shortly after Slager’s arrest, Givens announced that he would file a lawsuit against the North Charleston Police Department, saying in a press conference that he never heard back from the police department after filing his complaint.

Black Lives Matter’s Charleston chapter made its demands known early and often, sometimes with a megaphone in front of City Hall. Its members asked the North Charleston City Council to call a public meeting to discuss the possibility of a civilian oversight committee, and Summey countered by offering to meet with them behind closed doors. The group refused, insisting that any conversations must be held in public.

Some city leaders have expressed resistance to the idea of an unelected board overseeing the police department, particularly if that board is granted subpoena powers. City Councilman Bobby Jameson said any proposal for a citizen oversight committee would likely have to come from Summey, who has held his office since 1994. “Since this is such a volatile situation, I don’t think any City Council member would do it,” Jameson said. “We’d probably do it through the mayor as a unity, not as an individual council member.”

Until that happens, the protesters aren’t going away. At the one-month rally, a coalition of neighborhood organizations, religious leaders, labor organizers and longtime activist groups voiced their support for a common agenda. Their demands included equal access to education and other opportunities for all North Charleston residents, transparency in city government, an end to racial profiling and police brutality and “independent, community-based oversight and accountability over the police department.”

Muhiyidin d’Baha, an organizer with the Charleston Black Lives Matter chapter, said his group will continue to protest. “All along, our strategy was to negotiate, demonstrate and resist. That hasn’t gone anywhere,” he said. “We have the same strategy. It’s just that now we have more political and social capital behind it.”

Aside from a small group of protesters who recently shut down traffic on a major bridge in neighboring Charleston, the response to the Walter Scott shooting has been much quieter than the mass marches and riots after recent police shootings of black men in other U.S. cities. But Kenneth Riley, the president of the local International Longshoremen’s Association chapter, mentioned at the one-month rally that the tone could shift.

“This community is very trusting and very patient. Don’t take that patience for granted,” he said. “Look around this country at what is happening and what hasn’t happened in Charleston. Don’t take the patience for granted.”