By now I don’t think there are very many people who haven’t seen the video of Walter Scott being shot by the police officer in South Carolina. My intuition is telling me that there is going to be a lot more to this case than what we are seeing on the surface. There are two additional videos also out. Of the two new ones, it is the first and most important one that shows the police officer’s car trailing the car driven by Walter Scott. It is a longer video that includes the Mercedes going down the street and even going over railroad tracks. When Walter Scott signals and turns into the parking lot, it is into the lot of an AUTO SUPPLY STORE!
Now I watched as the police officer tells Mr. Scott that his third brake light is out. That is the light that sits in the car’s rear window. So why did the officer need to see license, registration and insurance if the issue is a broken tail light and the car and driver are in the auto supply store’s lot? I mean shouldn’t the simple interaction be, “Sir your tail light is out. There’s the auto supply store. Take care of it before you get back on the road.” Or something else of that nature? I mean, simple and basic logic says if something isn’t working on a car, the auto supply store seems to be the perfect place one can buy what is needed to fix it.
On the video, we can hear Mr. Scott say he doesn’t have insurance as the car isn’t his and he’s considering buying it from a neighbor. So again, why did the police officer need a license? Is that standard procedure or overkill? Also even before pulling the car over, shouldn’t the officer have run a check on the license plate?
Now once back in his own car, the officer has Mr. Scott’s driver license. He knows where the man lives, his age and pretty much all he needs to know about him. So when Mr. Scott opens the car door and begins to run, the officer knows he is dealing with someone old enough to be his father and not a young buck that will be sprinting like The Flash. It is rumored via Mr. Scott’s family that Scott may have bolted because he thought that there was a warrant out for his arrest due to unpaid child support. Now that is another subject in regards to this case that got my intuition going. Because although I support and understand the need for child support laws, at what point do we the public need to address the “fear of a child support judgment?”
In Mr. Scott’s case, he is alleged to have owed around $18,000 in child support. It is easy to assume that owing that kind of money means his child probably didn’t have any kind of contact with him. Owing that kind of money made Mr. Scott eligible to be jailed (as he was previously). Spending days in jail might have meant the loss of a job which in this economy is not what anyone wants to have occurred. It can also mean the suspension of one’s driver license. So when everything is added up, even though all punishment is directed to the father, it is the child who loses. No support money, no relationship, no father.
I hope and pray that amongst all the changes that may happen in the aftermath of Mr. Scott’s death, we begin a nationwide discussion on what is the real need for change, if any, in regards to child support. Because in the end, the black community is already a failed experimentation in the notion that fathers and intact nuclear families don’t matter. Now I know a woman struggling to raise a child may not appreciate contributions of a non-monetary value. But if we can begin to get fathers back into their children’s lives, can we ever really put a pricetag on that relationship or lack thereof?
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