April 8 – How a Cell Phone Video Changed a Police Narrative; Similarities Between Ferguson and North Charleston; “The Growing Criminalization of Poverty”

Full Program

Part 1

We begin with the shooting death of an unarmed black man Walter Scott by a white police officer in North Charleston South Carolina that was captured on a cell phone and has forced the local police to change their story as first reported and charge Officer Michael Slager with murder. Corey Hutchins, the winner of the South Carolina Press Association’s Journalist of the Year award in 2012 joins us to discuss his article in The Daily Beast “Michael Slager’s Attorney Dumped Him As Soon As He Saw the Video” and the key role the cell phone video captured by a bystander played in changing the narrative.

Part 2

Then we speak with Bernard Powers, a Professor of History at the College of Charleston who is the author of “Black Charlestonians: A Social History”. He joins us to discuss the similarities to Ferguson, Missouri of the predominately white police force in the predominately black community of North Charleston, and the local reaction to the shooting that has sparked protests and renewed the call that “black lives matter”.

Part 3

Then finally we address the issue of the criminalization of poverty and the extent to which it applies in this case of the shooting death of Walter Scott. Karen Dolan, a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies who currently coordinates IPS’s Economic Hardship Reporting Project with New York Times best-selling author Barbara Ehrenreich and is the author of a new report “The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty”, joins us.