A Killing on Camera

The Rev. Calvin Butts this week threatened to withhold his electoral support from Mayor de Blasio. He demands the mayor order Police Commissioner Bill Bratton to fully abandon a host of proven tactics— from BrokenWindows, to what’s left of stopandfrisk — that Butts apparently thinks empower bad cops.

Butts is wrong — and the latest police shooting incident shows why.

Yes, copbashers are seizing on the North Charleston, S. C., case as proof of their claims that police nationwide are out of control. In fact, it shows the opposite.

The nowviral video of Officer Michael Slager shooting down an unarmed man after a routine traffic stop is a reminder that cameras are everywhere today — even in nearabandoned stretches of Southern towns.

That’s security cameras and, more important, cameras in countless cellphones. With easy uploading to the Internet, the imagined epidemic of criminal cops would be all over theWeb, were it real.

Add to that the swift, decisive action by local officials, who’ve fired Slager and charged him with murder. ( They’re also moving to equip police with body cameras, a possibly wise move to avert Fergusonstyle protests.)

As Mayor Keith Summey said: “If you make a bad decision, [ I] don’t care if you’re behind the shield . . . you have to live with that decision.” Amen to that.

By all accounts, this was no rush to judgment. The video clearly discredited Slager’s account of the incident.

Final judgment should await the conclusion of investigations still under way. But it will be tough for Slager to counter the evidence that’s already public.

Back before cellphones put a videocamera in nearly every citizen’s hand, bad cops had it much easier. Now they have that much more to fear.

And, that — not any lesson about what police nationwide are supposedly magically getting away with, without anyone catching them on video — is the real bottom line of the North Charleston killing.