the country are: brian hicks, a columnist for the "post and courier" newspaper in charleston, jessica pierceal co-chair of the black youth project, and philip stinson, a professor of criminal justice at bowling green university. brian hicks, there a history of racial tensions that we should know about especially in north charleston? >> yes, this has been going on for years, gwen. several members of the community, the naacp, they have claimed for well over a decade that north charleston police use racial profiling to pick on black citizens and what they do, their standard m.o. according to their critics, is to stop a black man on some minor traffic violation and then harass him, use it to detain him to see if there's an arrest wawrnt for him or search him in his car. this is a charge that's been made, the police department refused the charge and slager with this action has gone and proved exactly what the critics said has been happening. >> woodruff: so how unusual is it for officers in general to be charged with this sort of crime and this sort of offense? we saw it happen very rapidly here.