GoFundMe Shuts Down Campaign For Officer Charged With Murder Of Walter Scott

The Huffington Post |  By Jessica Dickerson Email Posted: 04/08/2015 5:27 pm EDT

A fundraising page dedicated to South Carolina police officer Michael Slager was shut down by GoFundMe on Wednesday.

Slager was charged with the murder of 50-year-old Walter Scott after video surfacedof him shooting at the unarmed man eight times. GoFundMe’s public relations manager, Kelsea Little, told The Huffington Post that the page's removal was "due to a violation of our terms and conditions.”

However, Little said GoFundMe was unable to discuss the details of the campaign with anyone other than the organizer because of "privacy concerns.”

One source of outside financial support for the Slager family will be North Charleston. In a press conference Wednesday, Mayor Keith Summey confirmed that the town would continue to pay for the medical insurance of the officer’s wife, who is eight months pregnant, until the birth of the child.

Comparisons have been drawn between the shooting of Scott and Ferguson, Missouri, teen Michael Brown, including the online fundraising for the officer involved in the shooting in response to protests against police brutality.

Controversy swirled around the establishment of two GoFundMe pages that raised money for Darren Wilson, the officer responsible for the fatal shooting of Brown in July. Combined, they had raised nearly half a million dollars before they disappeared from the Internet late August. more