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."

Comments

Systemic and widespread?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what the groupthink around here is, but "...now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is" is an expression of a preconceived notion, not a valid inference from data.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what the groupthink around here is, but "...now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is" is an expression of a preconceived notion, not a valid inference from data.

But it does kinda call into doubt all of this officer's prior cases, right? And how long has he been on the force?

And how many of this type of officer exist?

These stories of police corruption come from north and south, from many different cities and neighborhoods. This video shows something they have been claiming has been happening all along while every single police department has vehemently denied it. So ... your cheap "groupthink" rhetoric aside, this video is certainly putting the possibility out there that this is a systematic and widespread problem -- isn't it?

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I know what the groupthink around here is, but "...now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is" is an expression of a preconceived notion, not a valid inference from data.

It's hardly a statistical analysis(no surprise for a sentence-long chunk of text that doesn't even have any numbers in it); but there's a fairly strong cause for suspicion: We know (actually, we surprisingly frequently don't, because apparently nobody bothers to track this very hard) approximately how many police/public interactions occur where the public side ends up dead; and we know that those have historically been deemed either justified or minimally culpable virtually all the time. Now, we have access to independent video in a relatively small and unsystematic sample of those cases; and it turns out to differ from the official story fairly frequently.

Given the poor quality of the overall records, and the difficulty of characterizing the distribution of independently videoed encounters compared to encounters as a whole, it would be quite a trick to come up with any reasonably precise "Number of past justified uses of force that were actually murder" number; but a great deal easier to support the hypothesis that it isn't a small problem if it shows up in such a limited sample.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Mr D from 63]

I know what the groupthink around here is, but "...now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is" is an expression of a preconceived notion, not a valid inference from data.

I think there is a counter argument to that point. There is a lot of video being shot everyday of police encounters. It has become the 'thing to do', and there are very often bystanders with the ability to take video. But, we only see those videos if something exceptional happens. The vast majority of them never get distributed. So how 'systemic and widespread' would it appear if we saw 500 videos of cops white cops helping black citizens, cops handling a violent situation properly, and even cops putting up with abuse of citizens for every 1 bad cop video?

In the end, having video records of this stuff is a good thing, but we need to keep it in perspective.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[aardvarkjoe]

500:1? If it were 5000:1 or even 50000:1 ratio of showing cops doing good deeds vs police butchers, it would still be irrelevant.

It is completely relevant to the question of whether it is "systemic and widespread," which was the thread of conversation that you're replying to.

Nobody has said that cops are justified in brutality and murder. They are, however, entitled to be innocent until proven guilty.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Shakrai]

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.

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.

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.

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.

5. Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly. They only make the news when they screw up. There was a police shooting captured on body cam a few months ago. It was a clean shoot, so naturally it got perfunctory treatment by the national media, not the 24/7 coverage that we would have seen had it been unjustified.

Regarding racism, I haven't met any genuinely racist LEOs, even from category #4 above. I have encountered a certain level of cynicism, best demonstrated by a quote I heard from a LEO friend, "Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[sribe]

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.

NOTHING justifies shooting an unarmed fleeing man in the back when he's already 10 yards away.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Daemonik]

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, it's a TV show called Cops, maybe you've seen it.

The police have no lack of cheerleaders who will always dismiss public and especially minority complaints against them.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[drinkypoo]

But the fact is, there's nothing wrong with busting people for illegal activity in plain view of police who have legitimate reasons to be where they are. The fact the pot smoker is in jail is not a problem with the US justice system.

Not inherently, the question is whether the law that they're enforcing is a good one or not. In a Judge Dredd future in which the cops are required to dispense justice when they observe the commission of a crime, then you would be correct. There would be nothing wrong with that. But when the cops are busting people for victimless crimes, or even just busting people in ways which make situations worse period, I don't care whether they discovered the crime in a legitimate way or not. If throwing someone into the system for the commission of a crime will make the world a worse place by any rational measure, which is the typical outcome, then doing so is a reprehensible act and not one which is worthy of praise.

Obviously, there is some point at which the value of inserting someone into the "justice" machine to be folded, spindled, and mutilated rises above the value of letting them roam free. I'm not proposing anarchy. But I'm also proposing that people be held accountable for the consequences of their actions. Often, this differs from the law's purpose; often it is simple revenue generation, or other times a law is a deliberate attempt to maintain an unbalanced status quo. They're not all diamonds. Many if not most of them are just more turds.

So the anger in that situation is misplaced. It's not the cop's fault. It's not a failure of the justice system.

Like it or not, they're part of that system. They don't get a free pass just because the law says they get one. That will get them out of a courtroom, but there's no reason that should get them out of our consideration. They're where the rubber meets the road, as it were. They're perhaps the second line of defense against bad laws, once they become law anyhow. The first might be civil disobedience.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that you still believe that laws on paper are 'good' on their own right. Lets say the 2nd crime wasn't cannabis related, but this was an on-the-books anti-buggery law. 2 homosexuals get busted for doing the dirty (or you and your wife having illicit carnal relations). The point being that not all laws are created equal, and arresting people for private acts in their own homes (cannabis related or not) is stupid... and the cops that enforce those laws are using violence when they should be using discretion instead.

"And the cop is just doing his job." Ahh - the ole Nuremberg excuse. The point is that 'Yes' - it is up for the cop to decide what s(he) participates in. If he kills a jew because its the law, he is responsible. If he catches an escaped slave because it is the law, he is responsible. If he beats up a druggie because its the law, he is responsible. The law doesn't matter - you are responsible for your actions and we aught to treat them as such.

The anger is not misplaced. Stop blaming your neighbors for the actions of cops.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[poetmatt]

Without any example, you are basically lying with your post. It's just as easy to obfuscate information by providing no example and asking people to prove a negative.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Copid]

This. And it's way scarier than brutality. If the cops don't cover for each other and they can't file false reports, you can usually avoid getting roughed up or shot by not getting physical with them (although recent videos show for certain that even that's no guarantee--it just protects you from malice, not incompetence). Once they start filing false reports and backing up each other's lies, they're effectively beyond any control. They can do literally anything and get away with it, and a force that has unlimited power and no oversight will attract and eventually be dominated by people who will abuse it. That kind of culture is what turns healthy democracies into pre-industrial hellholes and keeps pre-industrial hellholes from ever developing into healthy democracies.

I'm willing to cut the officer a (very) small amount of slack here. People are calling it a "cold-blooded" shooting. It looks like more of a hot-blooded shooting. They'd been struggling and he was amped up. Hitting the guy with the TASER and having him not fall probably scared the hell out of him. He wasn't able to handle himself properly and he did a very wrong thing. He should answer for that just as any of us would answer for it if we shot somebody after a fight. But falsifying the report? That's fucking cold-blooded. Planting evidence (if that's what that object is)? Terrifying. I watched the video and was distrubed by the shooting, but casually dropping an object next to the body and calling in that he had a weapon? That gave me chills. That's the sort of thing that should be a capital offense if anything should. That's a direct, premeditated attack on civilization. None of us are safe.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Maritz]

He dropped the taser next to him after shooting him in the back. He made no attempt to check on the guy's condition. He tried to frame/set up a guy lying dying on the ground, and you're defending him, well done you.

Thank goodness it was a white on black action or we would not have even heard about it.

Are you seriously suggesting that the real problem with police racism is the other way around? LOL.

Your motivated reasoning is painfully, painfully obvious. If you're trying to come across as reasonable (you aren't) you need to try harder.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[BarbaraHudson]

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? - Who will guard (watch) the guardians? Now we know - us!

That confirms it

[Gonoff]

That video confirms my unvoiced preconceptions about your country. They may not remain unvoiced now.

It is good to see people recording events like this. Whether that is from bravery, curiosity or prurience does not matter. The watchers are now being watched.

Re:Bullshit

[ledow]

It doesn't matter what the majority do. It matters what the police officer in front of you is doing.

Gunning down a person who is running away from them means they are a high-risk to your self, especially if you're filming, especially if you're providing evidence against them, especially if they could perceive you as a threat.

I have absolutely no fear of police in my country. The average man on the street is infinitely more dangerous to me. I have never had a run-in with police that wasn't amicable, friendly, and a few ended in laughter on both sides - even when I could see their reasoning and could be a risk to them. I've never had cause to be arrested. I've only ever seen weapons on the only armed officers I've ever seen in the UK, who work in airports. Those officers scare me and I stay away from them out of some kind of natural self-preservation. I don't have any reason to be a threat to them, but what they perceive as a threat may differ from my intention. I've never spoken to one. I don't find them approachable. I would not ask them directions, or joke, or even greet them as I would an ordinary police officer.

But to film a police officer of any type (armed or not)? That puts me into their scope (sometimes quite literally in the US!). Though in doing that I'm morally sound, it's also adding tension to the situation and if the guy I'm filming *is* corrupt, murderous, etc. or just having a bad day or thinks he saw me have something else in my hands, then that's my reputation/life at risk too. UK people have had their cameras confiscated and even evidence destroyed in the past (the chief police officer did put out a clarification to all their officers that they are NOT allowed to do that, but that just scares me more - they should already know that they are NOT allowd to do that).

I'm not saying I'd film, or wouldn't do it, but it still needs to be recognised as a risk to the person doing it, whatever the situation, and however good the majority of police are.

And, I'm sorry, I would have to think before I did something like film a police officer deliberately, or ask for their number (which identifies them and which they are required to give on demand and which generally means you intend to report them). I'd probably still do it, out of a sense of moral judgement, but millions of people would not. It's not as simple as it being safe in a "safe" country, and the UK where I live is much safer than the US when it comes to dealing with police.

Re:Hero?

[Dog-Cow]

How can you say he's not in direct danger after he filmed a cop kill someone in cold blood? Think of it, the cop's story of having to shoot would have sounded a lot better if he had to fend off two assailants!

Re:Hero?

[weilawei]

When you live in a culture where police brutality is a thing;
When you live in a culture where merely taking notice of the police is a revolutionary act;
When you live in a culture where turning a blind eye to those in need is the norm;
When you live in a culture where merely questioning the state can lead to arrest;
When you live in a culture where an officer can shoot someone in the back while running away and get off scot-free;
When you live in a culture where an officer can shoot small children without notice;
When you put your own ass and assets on the line to take notice, holding a camera and recording video is indeed a brave act. The person holding the camera is a hero.

Re:PINAC

[gstoddart]

Yup, we live in a world where the police increasingly either don't know, or don't care, what the law says.

They've been told repeatedly they don't have the right to stop photography, confiscate cameras, or insist on deleting of images. But they do it anyway.

Which means we've reached the point where every cop needs to be wearing a body camera, and we need to stop taking their word for the outcomes of things. If your camera was magically not working you better have someone else who was there to support your version.

Far too often the police outright lie about what happened, and you simply can't trust them .. maybe not all of them, but since there's no way of knowing which are crooks and which aren't, it's time to assume they're all potentially dishonest.

Police need to understand they are there to enforce the law, not make up their own damned law. And if they can't do that, they need to be fired, or arrested depending on what they do.

These days it's hard not to arrive at the blanket conclusion of "Fuck the Police". Because enough of them are saying "fuck you" to us and totally ignoring what the law is.

There have been far too many incidents in which the police give a version of events, only to have that proven completely false when the video/pics show up. And yet we never seem to fire them or charge them with perjury, and they always seem to clear themselves of wrong doing.

The police have guns and the ability to screw up lives, which means they damned well need to be held to a very high standard.

Re:Please....

[ledow]

"Stop means stop and get on the damn ground."

Does it? That's a pretty implicit assumption at the end you have there.

And, sorry, but people run from police EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE YEAR. Probably thousands of times. Running away is not EVER justification to shoot. The police are the ones who should know that the best. He might be running away because his rival gang member just appeared behind you and you haven't seen him. He might be running away because you threatened him. For all we know, the guy might have asked for his name and badge number and the officer refused to provide, shot him with a taser and then the guy was trying to escape from what someone he may have had genuine cause to believe was just trying to kill him by PRETENDING to be a cop.

Running "towards" something/someone, possibly. But running away, no. You give chase, you don't shoot.

There's a reason that police procedure manuals are HUGE. And why you can get out of actual crimes just by being arrested in an incorrect manner. Because at those critical points you play by the book because you cannot take account of every situation.

And I'm pretty sure that pulling your gun, firing indiscriminately (8 shots is overkill, and at least 2 went out into the ether where they could have harmed the public), etc. is pretty low down on the list of procedures you are expected to follow as a police officer.

Stop being presumptive. I, as much as anyone, agree that stop means stop and *I* would stop - because I think it's a police officer and they asked me to stop. But there are a billion unknowns and there are also factors which easily affect even the simplest assumption that just because someone yells stop you should stop.

If you're a police officer, the vast majority of people you deal with every day will not be happy to see you, not want to do what you ask, and may well be hiding something. That makes it a deadly situation in which you have to be careful, but also means that you have to evaluate risks at all point.

The risk of a guy you've (allegedly) tasered who is running away? That he might get away. There's no record of violence. There's no threat to the officer. There's little threat to the public. And, as you see in the video, your colleague is just down the road anyway with a vehicle in which you can quickly recapture him.

Even drawing your gun (as an armed officer) would be subject to a disciplinary procedure in that instance in some countries. Let alone actually firing it. Let alone shooting to kill. Let along killing. Let alone all the other alleged actions and inconsistencies in statements just afterwards.

As much as you don't like it, a thug, a thief, a murderer, a rapist have pretty much the same rights as you unless a court decides otherwise. Even if the guy was wanted for murder, armed and dangerous - he was running away and had no visible firearm. He wasn't a threat until he pulled something.

Watch the Video in Question First

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just as easy to lie with a video as it is verbally. Remember that video of the police officer pepper spraying a protester in their car? It had purposely been cut so that it didn't show the preceding altercation that justified the officer's actions.

A couple years ago I sat in on a trial of an officer who was tried and convicted despite all evidence to the contrary, simply because of people blaming police for everything. That anger and frustration is completely misplaced - if people want change then they need to research politicians and make better voting choices.

It might behoove you to watch the video in question before you start to say something as arrogantly vapid as this comparing a situation you have no link to with this video.

What's in a name?

[Teun]

Police officer Michael T. Slager, the name Slager is Dutch for Butcher...

As an outsider, i.e. non-USA, I'd say the perfect example of a trigger happy 'culture'.
Around here a copper would be done for disproportional violence just for pulling his gun or Tazer on an unarmed man.

Re:Please....

[jellomizer]

People get scared. When they are scared they will often do stupid things.
Fight or Flight kicks in. Lets say someone has some unpaid parking tickets (they can't afford them), they get pulled over, they know they are going to jail, going to jail will cause him to lose his job so he will be in more stress.... Having to deal with the police facing such stresses can cause Fight or flight to kick in... So they will either try to run, they are not thinking that they will get away, or that they will get caught, their body is just telling them that they are in serious danger and they need to run, the other option may be the person will fight the officer, still not thinking if they will win or not, it is their primal instincts kicking in.

Now when someone pulls over one of our middle class folks. We may have gotten the same parking tickets, but we paid them off, perhaps it prevented us from getting a new video game or eating out for a few nights. So when we get pulled over we are not stressing about getting arrested we are just annoyed that we got caught. So we are not in fight or flight, for the most part we are just calm about it.

What you call thugs, isn't thuggery, but the fact that we haven't done a good job at culturally integrating groups together. So there are distinct cultures going on, with unique mannerisms, and acceptable and inappropriate behavior. And for people who don't get that they will often see the other side as threatening.

Re:And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[SailorSpork]

I don't think it is illegal to record police in the open, but that doesn't stop a lot of cops from intimidating citizens into stopping and attempting to confiscate / delete said recordings, especially if the cop did what this guy did. And if it comes to it, it takes a lot more courage to respectfully decline an intimidating request from a man in uniform holding a gun who just shot another man in the back. It didn't happen in this case, but I wonder in how many similar cases police have deleted such recordings? It seems to be standard practice for certain cops.

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Anonymous Coward]

Our scared-shitless terrorism reactionary laws allow the police to hold anyone for 48 hours without charge. That's more than enough for many (most?) people to lose their jobs. Submit or else, citizen.

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Jason Levine]

And if they don't arrest someone, they can threaten the person with arrest for "crimes" unless they erase the photos/video. Which, of course, makes no sense because either:

1) The person actually did commit a crime in which case the photos/video is evidence and forcing them to delete it is destruction of evidence.

or

2) The person didn't commit a crime in which case, there's no reason to delete the photos/video beyond "police office finds them inconvenient" (which, obviously, isn't a legal reason for forced deletion).

Unless the person is actively interfering with an arrest (e.g. getting between the officer and the suspect to get some shots of the officer's face), the police have no grounds to interfere with someone photographing or videoing them. And no matter what (EVEN if the person is interfering with an arrest), the officer has no right to force someone to delete the photos/videos they took.

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Anonymous Coward]

That has never stopped police from abusing people, destroying or taking public property and arresting people (who then "resist arrest" to ensure that the police officer had a "reason" to arrest them....).

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[kilfarsnar]

Our scared-shitless terrorism reactionary laws allow the police to hold anyone for 48 hours without charge. That's more than enough for many (most?) people to lose their jobs. Submit or else, citizen.

This is a good point. They don't have to convict you to screw up your life.

Fleeing VIOLENT FELON is justifiable ...

[drnb]

NOTHING justifies shooting an unarmed fleeing man in the back when he's already 10 yards away.

Certainly it was NOT warranted in this case given the victim's background and the given circumstances.

However it is legal and justifiable when the person is a fleeing violent felon and there is an immediate and likely threat of death or severe bodily injury to others. Again, that was NOT the situation for this victim, but your absolute claim of "nothing" is entirely mistaken. Consider the Boston bomber, after the bombing, after shooting the cop, if he had been unarmed and attempting to flee shooting him would have been entirely justifiable and legal. Now that is an extreme example from the other end of the spectrum but it should make the point.