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The Courage of Bystanders Who Press "Record"
HughPickens.com writes Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that in the past year, after the killings of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, many police departments and police reformists have agreed on the necessity of police-worn body cameras. But the most powerful cameras aren't those on officer's bodies but those wielded by bystanders. We don't yet know who shot videos of officer Michael T. Slager shooting Walter Scott eight times as he runs away but "unknown cameramen and women lived out high democratic ideals: They watched a cop kill someone, shoot recklessly at someone running away, and they kept the camera trained on the cop," writes Robinson. "They were there, on an ordinary, hazy Saturday morning, and they chose to be courageous. They bore witness, at unknown risk to themselves."
"We have been talking about police brutality for years. And now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is," tweeted Deray McKesson, an activist in Ferguson, after the videos emerged Tuesday night. "The videos over the past seven months have empowered us to ask deeper questions, to push more forcefully in confronting the system." The process of ascertaining the truth of the world has to start somewhere. A video is one more assertion made about what is real concludes Robinson. "Today, through some unknown hero's stubborn internal choice to witness instead of flee, to press record and to watch something terrible unfold, we have one more such assertion of reality."
"We have been talking about police brutality for years. And now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is," tweeted Deray McKesson, an activist in Ferguson, after the videos emerged Tuesday night. "The videos over the past seven months have empowered us to ask deeper questions, to push more forcefully in confronting the system." The process of ascertaining the truth of the world has to start somewhere. A video is one more assertion made about what is real concludes Robinson. "Today, through some unknown hero's stubborn internal choice to witness instead of flee, to press record and to watch something terrible unfold, we have one more such assertion of reality."
and unfortunately that requires police with guns and military gear now due to the influence of the NRA.
In the U.S., the police have always needed guns (at least to some degree). I am not sure how the influence of the NRA can be held responsible for the police "needing" military gear, considering that police began using military gear as laws restricting gun ownership increased. It is worth noting that when it was legal for the common citizen to own automatic firearms, the police were perfectly satisfied to be armed with civilian weaponry.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Agreed. GP is incorrect - it's not illegal to record police. Yet, anyway...
In answer to your question: yes, ALL prior cases he was a primary LEO on will be called into question (IF the defendant has a decent lawyer or time to work on this). What that means is anyone who is incarcerated on a case that he worked on will have a free appeal process (The LEO has been shown to be corrupt) and possibly a get-out-of-jail-free card if they had proclaimed innocence and planting of evidence (As now there is video evidence that he does this). That adds a reasonable doubt. It doesn't matter how guilty or violent the incarcerated person is.
As for legality of videotaping officers (AC posted this below): It is legal to videotape officers, but in some jurisdictions they can charge you with wiretapping if there is sound on the video, but it's another thing to make that stick (It's mostly a tactic to get and destroy the evidence). This is why you should set your phone to back things up on the cloud, so if the phone is destroyed, you keep all your data (I *love* cloud computing).
Not all LEO's are bad, but the few bad apples give the rest a really bad name. Although there are some systems that are so corrupt, through and through, it will take a lot to clean them up.
Here is a recent real world example from Bakersfield Calif. A suspect was beaten by police outside of a local hospital and died an hour later. Two people called 911 and said they were video taping the event. The cops showed up at their door and took their cell phones. When they were returned the videos had been deleted. This happened in May 2013 and there seems to be no further news on the matter. Case closed.
Police accused of erasing cell phone footage of fatal beating.
There was no legal justification for the police to confiscate the phones. They broke the law in doing so. The FBI examined the phones and couldn't find the videos. There have been civil suits, but no charges or administrative actions against any of the officers.
In the current incident the video was turned over to the lawyer for the family. If the police had gotten their hands on it first it would have disappeared. If you deny this happens you are condoning lawless police violence that can and does result in murder.
If you think this is an isolated case, to to Photography is Not a Crime. They have a lot of examples of how police are caught breaking the law and illegally stopping people who video their bad behavior.
Why is Snark Required?
Are there videos that show justified shootings that don't make national news because there's no story other than "cop defends life of self and/or others"?
Yes.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Falsifying a police report and planting a weapon on someone you just killed is corruption.
love is just extroverted narcissism
That happened with this one as well. It doesn't show the previous action which led up to the officer and the suspect being out in the middle of the grass after a traffic stop. It doesn't show where the officer and the suspect were involved in a tussle as claimed by the officer, during which the suspect reportedly took the officer's stun gun.
It does show some of that where there is something that gets knocked from the officers hand long before the shooting that the officer picks up and places near the body after the shooting. After all you do need to show that the guy took your used, single shot Taser to justify shooting him in the back.
1) Yes, the police have a siege mentality. Is it justified? Not by these statistics http://www.nleomf.org/facts/of... Officer fatalities are down, and have been down and in fact are not appreciably higher than they were 100 years ago.
2) Yes, modern media and CERTAIN POLITICIANS reinforce the siege mentality, because it benefits them. From selling military class hardware to police, to privatized prisons, policing is big business and is marketed to justify big ticket expenses just as aggressively as the next iPhone.
3) The war on drugs provided the POLICE with a strong profit motive as well, as their policy of seizing property disproportionately benefited police agencies to aggressively pursue even the smallest of drug cases.
4) The police make little to no effort to weed out the irresponsible officers, and in many cases actively pursue programs to recruit them. They defend these known disruptors to the ends of the earth and will do anything rather than admit fault. They no longer attempt to be members of their communities, just the biggest bullies in the community.
5) The media and body politic never make a story out of the DMV doing their jobs, or the garbage men doing their jobs or a hell of a lot of people DOING WHAT IS EXPECTED OF THEM!!!! Why should the public have to stroke LEO's egos for obeying the damn law and their own procedures???
These stories of police corruption come from north and south, from many different cities and neighborhoods.
This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue. I have friends and family members who are police officers, the lion's share of them are decent people, but knowing them and the small handful of their colleagues who aren't decent people I can proffer a few opinions on what drives behaviors such as these:
1. There's a siege mentality in modern law enforcement, manifested as "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do you have to worry about getting shot at your job? Probably not. LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.
Police are safer than they've ever been. The job isn't even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs. Yes, there are people who shoot at an officer who pulls them over. There are also people who shoot at the guy working the 2AM shift in Mapco. But I don't walk into Mapco at 2AM and have the guy pull a gun on me "just in case".
2. Modern media reinforces #1, by making line of duty deaths/injuries more accessible than ever before. Follow the "Officer Down Memorial Page" on Facebook; there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time, but in a large country statistically rare occurrences happen with distressing frequency and modern media ensures that we know all about them.
Right. In other words, a big part of the problem is cultural, both within law enforcement and from without. I know cops, too, and they're always talking in hushed tones about how it's just becoming so much more dangerous. A big part of why is that they don't feel they have as much support from the community as they used to. And a big part of that is a) municipalities using cops for revenue enhancement (see Ferguson) and b) cameras are now exposing just how much corruption there is in law enforcement and the justice system as a whole. See recent videos of a judge asking a prosecutor if she's going to charge a police officer with perjury after he obviously committed perjury as a good example.
3. The War on Drugs provides such a profit motive that criminals are encouraged to arm themselves and resist violently, which in turn drives the militarization of law enforcement while reinforcing the siege mentality. The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.
Research shows that most raids on "drug houses" either turn up "no weapons" or a handgun. There's very little violent resistance.
4. There are a handful of people in law enforcement who have no business being in law enforcement, or any other field that requires them to interact with human beings as a matter of course. They have chips on their shoulders, the stereotype is the kid that got bullied a lot in high school, now he has a badge and a gun, so don't you dare fuck with him. These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.
Let me give you an example of why you're wrong. And I could come up with a hundred (literally) but I just need one. Take the David Bisard case in Indianapolis. You can look it up in Google, but short version: Bisard got stone drunk before work one day, jumped in his squad car, someone mentioned that they were doing a simple drug arrest on the radio, Bisard said he'd be right there, they said they didn't need him,
Do you have ESP?
Because someone (presumably the lawyer) gave a copy of it to the New York Times.
Prior to the video, the media was spinning the situation as a case of self-defense by a military veteran police officer against a ten-time convicted criminal. Never mind that he served in the Coast Guard and that the victim hadn't been convicted of anything violent since 1987. After the video, no one can deny that that account is quite incorrect. Moreover, the video makes it clear that evidence was planted (the officer can be seen picking up what we assume is his Tazer and then dropping it next to the victim), that he lied on the police report (he claimed that CPR was administered; it wasn't), and that his partner was in on all of it (his partner is standing next to him as he plants the evidence).
There's this thing called the "court of public opinion", and the lawyer probably recognized that it was important to get ahead of the issue, stop the spin the media was putting on it, and put national public pressure on the police and DA to deal with this correctly, otherwise it would have turned into another nameless guy getting killed in self-defense by the police. Instead, they now have a real chance at winning their case against the officer.
It is a crime. If an officer tells you to stop recording and you do not, it is called "disobeying a police officer's order" and it IS a misdemeanor.
Just in case that comment is taken as hyperbole, the video of Walter Scott's shooting was released only BECAUSE of police corruption. The officer lied, and the department backed him.
http://www.mediaite.com/online...
Your first paragraph is spot on (as is your second, but I have no commentary on that at this point) and this is the exact reason s corrupt cop is a bad cop even if he puts away the right guy 99.9% of the time. When a cop is following proper procedures and puts away the wrong guy, all of his prior conviction-bearing arrests hold up and the criminals stay behind bars; but, when a corrupt cop puts away (or kills) the wrong guy and gets found out, all of his prior arrests are called into question and criminals go free.
That's actually how the system should work, though; it's a good thing, in a way. People should only be punished when they're proven, beyond any reasonable doubt, to be guilty, and nobody arrested by an evidence-planting corrupt cop can be proven guilty to that standard. Even if the arresting officer is one of the majority of good cops, simply having a corrupt cop involved in the investigation puts the whole case in jeopardy. This is the real problem with police corruption.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Speaking of Texas, a bill has just been introduced there (HB 2918) that prohibits filming the police within a radius of 25 feet, unless the person filming is a member of the "news media"- defined as an employee of 1) a newspaper that publishes at least once a week, 2) a magazine that publishes on a regular interval, or 3) a TV or radio station that is licensed by the FCC. Filming the incident yourself and forwarding the video to a newspaper, magazine, or TV station would make you guilty of a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by a 180 day jail term and a $2000 fine.