Officer who shot man in S.C. had prior excessive-force complaint

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.