1) North Charleston
Linky
A white South Carolina police officer has been charged with murder after a black man who appeared to be fleeing from him was shot dead. State investigators arrested North Charleston police officer Michael Slager on Tuesday after viewing a video of the shooting. Authorities say the victim, Walter Lamer Scott, was shot after the officer already targeted him with a stun gun.
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A video of the incident published by the New York Times shows a brief scuffle before Scott begins running away. The video then shows the officer firing several shots at Scott, who falls to the ground.
The Post and Courier newspaper of Charleston reported that Scott had been arrested about 10 times, mostly for failing to pay child support or show up for court hearing. Scott's brother, Anthony, told the Post and Courier that he believed his brother fled from Mr Slager because he owed child support. Victim's brother Anthony Scott: "If there wasn't a video would we know the truth? We do know the truth now."
1) Girls in prison
Linky
The photos show girls wasting the day in their bunks, staring at the wall. Some struggle with mental illness. The girls obscure their faces or are turned away from the camera. That works to protect their identities, but it also evokes shame. Ross seems to be saying the shame isn't the girls' -- it's ours as a society for jailing children.
Ross recalled one particularly agonizing interview with a girl who kept telling him, "I can't wait to get out of here so I can kill myself." "She was just a kid, but she was at that place where you have no hope," he said. "I feel all these stories, but that one just hit me hard. I was sobbing. You want to say, 'It will get better,' but you also know the system and you know that you can't say that."
But times were different then, he said, and there's been a cultural turn in America toward criminalizing a child's bad behavior. He recalls a detention-center director in Reno, Nevada, who asked him to visit and take photos. At intake, he photographed a fifth-grader who had been taken to jail because he had acted up in class.
