National

Officer Who Shot Man Had Prior Excessive Force Complaint

Published

11 years ago

April 9, 2015

Anthony Scott holds a photo of himself, center, and his brothers Walter Scott, left, and Rodney Scott, right, as he talks about his brother at his home near North Charleston, S.C., Wednesday, April 8, 2015. Walter Scott was killed by a North Charleston police officer after a traffic stop on Saturday. The officer, Michael Thomas Slager, has been charged with murder. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)

MITCH WEISS, Associated Press
MICHAEL BIESECKER, Associated Press

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — The white South Carolina police officer charged with murder for shooting an unarmed black man in the back was allowed to stay on the force despite a 2013 complaint that he used excessive force against another unarmed black man.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Mario Givens recounted Wednesday how he was awakened before dawn one morning by loud banging on the front door of his family’s North Charleston home.

On the porch was Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager, the officer now charged in the shooting death of Walter Lamer Scott, which was captured in dramatic cellphone footage by a bystander Saturday.

Givens, who was clad only in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, cracked open his door and asked what the officer wanted.

“He said he wanted to come in but didn’t say why,” said Givens, now 33. “He never said who he was looking for.”

Then, without warning, Slager pushed in the door, he said.

“Come outside or I’ll tase you,” he quoted the officer as saying, adding: “I didn’t want that to happen to me, so I raised my arms over my head, and when I did, he tased me in my stomach anyway.”

Givens said the pain from the stun gun was so intense that he dropped to the floor and began calling for his mother, who also was in the home. At that point, he said another police officer came into the house and they dragged him outside and threw him to the ground. He was handcuffed and put in a squad car.

Though initially accused of resisting the officers, Givens was later released without charge.

Asked about the 2013 incident on Wednesday, North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said the department plans to review the case to see whether its decision to exonerate Slager was correct. Pryor said he had no timetable for the review.

Givens’ relatives remember the encounter vividly.

“It was very devastating,” said Bessie Givens, 57, who was awaked by her son’s piercing screams. “You watch your son like that, he’s so vulnerable. You don’t know what’s going to happen. I was so scared.”

It turned out that Givens’ arrest was a case of mistaken identity. Officers had been looking for his brother, Matthew Givens, whose ex-girlfriend had reported that he came into her bedroom uninvited, then left when she screamed and called 911.

The woman, Maleah Kiara Brown, told The AP on Wednesday that she and a friend had gone to the Givens home with the officers and were sitting outside when Slager knocked on the door. The second officer had gone around to the back of the house.

She had provided the officers with a detailed description of her ex-boyfriend, Matthew Givens, who is about 5 feet, 5 inches tall. Mario Givens stands well over 6 feet.

“He looked nothing like the description I gave the officers,” Brown said. “He asked the officer why he was at the house. He did it nicely. The police officer said he wanted him to step outside. Then he asked, ‘Why, why do you want me to step outside?’ Then the officer barged inside and grabbed him.”

Moments later, she saw the police officers drag Mario Givens out of the house and throw him in the dirt. Brown said she kept yelling to the officers that they had the wrong man, but they wouldn’t listen. Though Givens was offering no resistance, she said, she saw Slager use the stun gun on him again.

“He was screaming, in pain,” she said. “He said, ‘You tased me. You tased me. Why?’ It was awful. Terrible. I asked the officer why he tased him and he told me to get back.”

“He was cocky,” she said of Slager. “It looked like he wanted to hurt him. There was no need to tase him. No reason. He was no threat — and we told him he had the wrong man.”

She said she later told a female police supervisor what she had seen.

The next day, an angry Mario Givens went downtown to police headquarters and filed a formal complaint. He and his mother say several neighbors who witnessed what happened on the family’s front lawn also contacted the police, though they say officers refused to take their statements.

The incident report filed by Slager and the other officer, Maurice Huggins, provides a very different version of events. In the report, obtained by The AP through a public-records request, Slager wrote that he could not see one of Givens’ hands and feared he might be holding a weapon. He wrote that he observed sweat on Givens’ shirt, which he perceived as evidence that he could have run from Brown’s home, and then ordered him to exit several times.

When Givens didn’t comply, Slager said he entered the home to prevent him from fleeing and was then forced to use his stun gun when Givens struggled with him. The officers’ report describes the Givens brothers as looking “just alike.”

After Mario Givens filed his complaint, the department opened an internal investigation. A brief report in Slager’s personnel file says a senior officer was assigned to investigate. After a couple of weeks, the case was closed with a notation that Slager was “exonerated.”

Brown is listed as a witness in the investigative report, but her purported statement included none of the details she said she provided about Slager shocking Givens while he was on the ground. She said she was never contacted as part of the police investigation and had not spoken with anyone about that night until she was contacted by an AP reporter Wednesday.

The report includes statements from Givens and from another woman who was there that night, Yolonda Whitaker, who said she saw Slager stun Givens “for no reason.” Efforts to reach Whitaker by phone and the addresses listed for her in the police report were unsuccessful.

Givens said he was never contacted as part of the internal investigation and learned the case had been closed only after he went to the station about six weeks later and asked what happened.

“They never told me how they reached the conclusion. Never. They never contacted anyone from that night. No one from the neighborhood,” Givens said.

Givens shook his head Wednesday when asked about his reaction to learning Slager had been charged with murder. Slager is being held without bail.

“It could have been prevented,” Givens said of Scott’s death. “If they had just listened to me and investigated what happened that night, this man might be alive today.”

___

Biesecker reported from Raleigh, North Carolina. Associated Press writer Jeffery Collins in North Charleston, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Biesecker at http://Twitter.com/mbieseck

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The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of may 6 – 12, 2026

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2026 Lucid Air Grand Touring Review — Is This $136K EV Sedan Worth It?

AUTONETWORK ON BLACKPRESSUSA — Finished in Stellar White Metallic with the Tahoe Grand Touring interior, this Lucid makes a strong first impression. The shape is sleek and low, but it still feels elegant instead of trying too hard. Features like soft-close doors, powered illuminated door handles, 20-inch Aero Lite wheels, and the Glass Canopy Roof help the car feel expensive before you even start it.

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The 2026 Lucid Air Grand Touring is the kind of luxury EV that makes people stop and ask a simple question: Is this really better than a Tesla Model S, Mercedes EQS, or BMW i7? At $136,150, it has to do more than look futuristic. It has to feel special every time you get in it.

Finished in Stellar White Metallic with the Tahoe Grand Touring interior, this Lucid makes a strong first impression. The shape is sleek and low, yet it still feels elegant rather than trying too hard. Features like soft-close doors, powered illuminated door handles, 20-inch Aero Lite wheels, and the Glass Canopy Roof help the car feel expensive before you even start it.

Inside is where the Air Grand Touring really makes its case. The 34-inch Glass Cockpit Display and retractable Pilot Panel screen give the cabin a clean, modern look that still feels different from other EVs. The Tahoe Extended Leather and Lucid Black Alcantara headliner lifts the sense of occasion, and the front seats are a highlight. They are 20-way power-adjustable, heated, ventilated, and include massage. That matters because luxury buyers at this price expect comfort first.

Rear passengers are not ignored either. You get 5-zone heated rear seating, a rear center console display, and power rear and rear side window sunshades. Add in the Surreal Sound Pro system with 21 speakers, and the Air feels like a true long-distance luxury sedan.

Lucid also gives this car serious EV hardware. The dual-motor all-wheel-drive system, 900V+ charging architecture, and Wunderbox onboard charger are big talking points. Buyers in this segment care about range, charging speed, and everyday ease, not just raw performance. That is where the Lucid continues to stand out.

On the technology side, the Air Grand Touring includes DreamDrive Premium, with 3D Surround View Monitoring, Blind Spot Warning, Automatic Park In and Out, Automatic Emergency Braking, and a Driver Monitoring System with distracted and drowsy driver alerts. This one also has DreamDrive Pro, which adds future-capable ADAS hardware.

There are still some real-world annoyances. Based on your notes, the windshield wiper control is hard to find and use, and that matters more than people think in a high-tech car. When controls become less intuitive, even a beautiful interior can feel frustrating.

Still, the 2026 Lucid Air Grand Touring succeeds where it matters most. It feels luxurious, advanced, comfortable, and thoughtfully engineered. For buyers who want an EV sedan that feels truly premium and less common than the usual choices, this Lucid makes a very strong case.

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Snoop Dogg Celebrates 10 Til’ Midnight at the Compound

LOS ANGELES SENTINEL — The album is paired with a film that stars Snoop Dogg, Hitta J3, G Perico, and Ray Vaughn, and one of the strongest elements of the whole project is that the production stayed rooted right here in Los Angeles.

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Snoop Dogg celebrated the premiere of 10 Til’ Midnight at his Inglewood recording studio & multipurpose facility, The Compound, but the night felt like much more than an album release. It felt like Los Angeles. It felt like legacy. And it felt like another major move from one of the city’s greatest cultural architects as he continues to prove that he is not just dropping music — he is building moments, shaping narratives, and pushing the culture forward in real time.

What made the event so powerful was the clarity behind the vision. During a panel conversation with DJ Hed, Snoop opened up about the heart behind 10 Til’ Midnight, explaining that the project was created to help bridge older and younger generations while also speaking to the long-standing divisions between Bloods and Crips in a unique way through film. That alone gave the project a different kind of weight. This was not just about songs. This was about using creativity as a tool for connection. This was about taking a story rooted in Los Angeles and telling it in a way that could bring people together.

Snoop Congratulated By Rapper & Fellow 10 Til Midnight Cast Member G Perico (CreativeLB/KreativeKapturez)

The album is paired with a film that stars Snoop Dogg, Hitta J3, G Perico, and Ray Vaughn, and one of the strongest elements of the whole project is that the production stayed rooted right here in Los Angeles. The film was shot in the city, including at WePlay Studios in Inglewood, which gave the entire project an even deeper hometown feel. It was not just a West Coast story in content — it was a Los Angeles-made production from the ground up.

That matters because, in a city like this, authenticity still carries weight. Snoop understands how to make sure that what he creates does not just represent Los Angeles on the surface, but actually comes from it.

What also makes 10 Til’ Midnight significant is that it represents another major step in Snoop’s evolution as both an artist and executive. Public reporting around the project identifies it as his 22nd studio album, but the bigger story is what it represents in this season of his life. This is one of several consecutive moves he has made in his 50s that show he is still building, still expanding, and still finding new ways to reinvent what the next chapter looks like.

Snoop Dogg at the Premiere of 10 Til Midnight (CreativeLB/KreativeKapturez)

Now, as the head of Death Row Records and the newly aligned leader of Death Row Pictures, he is taking the brand into a new dimension. That is what made this moment feel bigger than music. Snoop is not just protecting the legacy of Death Row — he is stretching it. He is expanding it beyond records and into film, visual storytelling, and larger creative worlds that can continue carrying the label’s impact forward. Public reporting has noted that this project arrives as part of that broader cinematic push.

That is a major Los Angeles move because the city has always been built on the intersection of music, film, neighborhood identity, and cultural storytelling. With 10 Til’ Midnight, Snoop is leaning all the way into that intersection.

The room at The Compound reflected that. It felt like a private premiere, but it also felt like a statement — a reminder that Snoop Dogg’s staying power has never been based only on nostalgia. It comes from his ability to remain connected, remain visionary, and remain in tune with how to move the culture without losing the essence of who he is.

That is why this premiere mattered. It was not just about celebrating another album. It was about witnessing a Los Angeles legend continue to evolve, continue to unify, and continue to use art to tell stories that hit deeper than entertainment alone.

In that sense, 10 Til’ Midnight became more than a project launch. It became another example of how Snoop Dogg is still taking Los Angeles to the next level — using music, film, and legacy together to build something bigger than a moment.