UNNECESSARY PROOF

Now we have cell-phone video of a new and outrageous police shooting in South Carolina. A black man runs from a white cop because (it is alleged) he feared going to jail for unpaid child or spousal support.

The cop, who had already Tased the fellow, watches the guy (Walter Scott) run away for only a fraction of a second before pulling his service weapon and firing eight times—hitting the man five times in the back and killing him.

The cop (Michael Slager) says he feared for his life. He says Scott grabbed his Taser. Slager is currently under arrest for murder.

On network news a former FBI investigator looked at the video of the man running and said this is when a proper cop pursues on foot. You don't just shoot the guy because you're reluctant to work up a sweat by chasing him.

Black folks in the "Black Lives Matter" movement point to this new video as proof of what they've been saying all along: white cops are murdering black guys in the street for no reason.

But this is not proof of that.

This is proof that one particular white cop shot and killed a particular black man because he apparently felt it was more effective police work than chasing him down and wrestling with him on the ground.

This is not substitute photographic evidence Michael Brown was shot and killed in the same manner. (Brown was not shot in the back.)

Similarly, the video does not add weight to existing evidence a man was choked to death in New York City or that a 12-year-old kid brandishing a pellet gun was murdered in Cleveland.

This video applies only to the case it depicts. No other conclusions are valid. It doesn't even add a point to a graph already alleged to be cluttered with points. This may in fact be the first valid point in recent memory on an otherwise empty field.

Unfortunately, the human brain plays by its own rules. A proof of one thing can be taken as proof of another thing.

In other words: "It's all good."

Folks know what they know and they can't be wrong—as far as they know. Why? Because everything they see proves them right. In this case, the new video is just more evidence backing up the earlier conclusions. Evidence they don't even need.

Video from an NBC affiliate in Los Angeles showed San Bernardino Sheriff's deputies punching and kicking a man on the ground (he'd fallen off a stolen horse). As far as could be seen, the fellow was proned out in the dirt when the cops got to him. He even put his hands behind his back. The deputies wailed on him anyway. (They've been suspended by the Sheriff.)

The suspect was white.

Seems like every day we're treated to new video of folks getting pummeled by the police in what certainly seems to be cases of psycho cop-rage.

And much of this footage involves white cops going to town on unarmed black guys. It would be hard to make the case that white cops are not displaying a disturbing attitude of racism in this country.

That said, it doesn't follow that white cops are murdering black folks right and left. Getting photographic proof of this one incident does not validate all the other alleged murders.

Look, I'm not saying it's not happening. I'm just saying we don't have any reason to know one way or the other. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop a lot of us from knowing for sure.

But that's our birthright as human beings. We invented knowing for sure.