Stories by Tony Bartelme

Shots fired When police pull the trigger in South Carolina, investigators fail to answer key questions about what happened, fail to document the backgrounds of the officers and demonstrate a clear pattern of double standards that favor police. An officer in Summerville pumps four bullets through the side and back windows of a fleeing car, killing a young man. An officer in Duncan sees a woman climb into his cruiser, yells, “Get out or I’ll shoot you!” and then does just that. An officer in North Charleston shoots eight bullets at Walter Scott’s back, killing him on the spot. Every 10 days on average, South Carolina law enforcement officers point their guns at someone and pull the triggers — 235 shootings since 2009. Eighty-nine people died, and 96 were wounded. Each shooting also triggered an investigation into whether officers were justified in using deadly force. W...

2.7 seconds How 8 bullets pierced the nation By Andrew Knapp and Tony Bartelme A blink of an eye takes about four-tenths of a second. From the first shot to the last, the shooting of Walter L. Scott took 2.7 seconds. Seven blinks. This brief moment in time would have a cascading effect: Scott grabbed his left side and crumpled face-first onto a patch of grass; Michael T. Slager, the North Charleston police officer who shot him, lowered his pistol; Feidin Santana, on his way to work, finished capturing it all on his phone camera, video that would bring these seconds to the world.  But that 2.7-second space in time is deceptive. Experts in officer-involved shootings say they usually happen after a chain of events, each link leading to another until the one where an officer decides to pull the trigger. And this burst of gunfire also happened against the longer chain of history, in this case, one stretching back to slavery, segregation, decades of discrimination and, more re...