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?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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?

[Required Snark]

The police destroy cellphone video evidence when they get their hands on it. After they get away with this typically nothing happens, which is why you don't hear about it. The cover up works.

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.

She says she saw six sheriff's deputies hitting a man with a club and kicking him.

She took out her cell phone and told the deputies what she was doing. It's unclear whether she thought this might get them to stop. If that was the case, this doesn't seem to have happened.

She says the man screamed and cried for help for a total of eight minutes. He finally fell silent, and the police then allegedly tied him up and dropped him twice on the ground.

It was only then, Melendez said, that they enacted CPR. David Sal Silva, 33, died less than an hour later.

Melendez said that she and her daughter's boyfriend both filmed what happened. She also said that police confiscated both their phones without a warrant being served.

The sheriff's department disputes this version, insisting that everything was done legally and the phones have been handed to the Bakersfield Police Department.

Melendez and her daughter's boyfriend both said that police officers paid them a visit at their homes and demanded the phones.

Worse, there are now accusations that some of the cell phone footage has been deleted. A report from the Los Angeles Times says that the FBI has now been called into the investigation.

This move was prompted, said Kern County Sheriff Donny Youngblood, by the fact that one of the two confiscated cell phones seems to have no footage on it at all.

"Our credibility is at stake here," he told the L.A. Times. More witnesses have come forward to support the essence of Melendez's claims that the police were overly zealous.

"They must have gotten rid of one of the videos," Melendez's daughter, Melissa Quair, told the L.A. Times.

Some might conclude from incidents such as the one in Bakersfield that if you're of a mind to film the police and believe wrong has been done, post it to YouTube as soon as you can.

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.

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?

[Shakrai]

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.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Hmm, a few minutes of google-fu shows the number of "civilians" killed by police in 2013 (to pick a year as close as possible to today, and far enough back to be sure the statistics have all been gathered together) to be 320.

Total number of police killed by "enemy action" in LOD (not accidents) was 29 that year.

A bit more shows that there are about 900,000 police officers in the USA.

So, in any given year, maybe one police officer in 3000 shoots a "civilian", maybe 1 in 30,000 is shot by a civilian.

Is this a problem? You betcha!

Is it evidence of "systematic and widespread" abuse? Not hardly....

PS. With any luck, this butthead will hang (figuratively or literally, depending on how SC handles that sort of thing), pour encourager les autres....

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?

[avandesande]

Falsifying a police report and planting a weapon on someone you just killed is corruption.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Anonymous Coward]

>Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly.

Of course. You don't get a medal if you're a doctor who makes it through the day without killing a patient; or a teacher who gets through the week without molesting a student. Do you want a parade and a raise simply because your code complies?

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Jiro]

You can't compare the two because the average person is exposed to a different proportion of criminals than the average police officer, so the increased rate for police may be explained by the police being more likely to run into criminals.

Also, the rate for the general population is driven down because it includes babies, children, old people, and the handicapped who would have a hard time killing someone and would not be eligible to become police.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[Daemonik]

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???

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?

[Trailer Trash]

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,

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.

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[nehumanuscrede]

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:

I too have friends and family in LE ( and have my entire life ) so I offer some counterpoints for you to consider.

The problem is actually both brutality and corruption. When you beat the sh*t out of someone, it's brutality. When you do it wearing a badge, it's corruption since you're abusing not only your authority and trust, but that of the LE community as a whole. No one views incidents like this as Officer so and so did X. Rather it is remembered as " Did you see what the Police did ? "

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.

The " seige mentality " as you put it, is a mental construct of their own design that, in their mind, justifies their attitude and behavior to anyone not wearing a badge.

Let's use an animal analogy. Animals aren't typically looking to harm anything. ( Unless they're hungry, or protecting their young, different issue ) Typically, if you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. However, if you threaten one or scare it, they can become VERY dangerous. Over time, assuming you continue threatening or scaring them, the animal will fear you. From that point forward, every encounter with the animal becomes a dangerous one. The funny thing is, it's not the fault of the animal, rather the one who continues to threaten or scare it. The police are in the same boat. Folks are scared of police now. Many no longer look to them as protectors or someone they turn to when they need help. The police are to be avoided at all costs. When cornered by one, many will act irrationally based on personal or learned knowledge ( truthful or otherwise ) of what they are likely to expect from the encounter.

Here's the fun part: The actions of a few idiots with badges jeoprodize the lives of ALL Law Enforcement because once the trust is lost, it's very, very difficult to regain. Of course, that pendulum swings both ways. While the vast majority of folks are decent, the thugs are what the officers see every day. After a while, officers simply view everyone without a badge as a thug. Which starts the cycle of mistrust.

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.

I think it would be rather eye opening to post similar numbers of folks unjustifiably beaten and / or killed by police. ( assuming we can every get accurate numbers on that ) Want to place bets on which list is larger ? :D

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.

Pfff. The War on Drugs is merely the excuse the police use to arm themselves better

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[MSG]

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...

Re:Systemic and widespread?

[BronsCon]

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.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[BarbaraHudson]

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

PINAC

[drinkypoo]

I follow Photography Is Not A Crime on G+, and boy is it ever chilling. If you feel like you need more of that cold feeling in your belly, just follow those guys.

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:Hero?

[Neil Boekend]

IMHO in this case it is. The person with the gun probably does not agree with you filming them.
These people appear to have only little better moral code than your average bank robber. Thus when you film them you are kinda heroic.
I don't consider them to be cops by the way. The badge does not make the cop. A good cop makes the badge worth more than it's scrap metal price.

Re:This cop is clearly wrong

[Attila Dimedici]

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.

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: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Dins]

Agreed. GP is incorrect - it's not illegal to record police. Yet, anyway...

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Trepidity]

The police do often act as if it is, though. Not under a specific "illegal to record the police" statute, but making bullshit use of other laws, e.g. "interfering with a crime scene". At the very least they can often stop the filming and arrest someone, even if the charges don't stick.

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.

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:Hero?

[T.E.D.]

Holding a camera and recording video while in no direct danger does not make someone a hero.

If the video you are recording is a murder, and your video will have a direct impact upon the murder's ability to get away with the crime, it most certainly does make you a hero. If the cop had noticed, he could easily have made it two killings, "accidentally" smashed the phone, and got away with both. Afterwards, the videographer's got a murderer and an unknown amount of his buddies pissed off at him. And these are people skilled in investigation with the full power and resources of the state behind them. They WILL find out who he is and where he lives.

I had a relative who reported a cop for assault once. For her troubles, she got to suffer months of pointless traffic stops, parking tickets, and car vandalism. If a murder was involved...I don't know that I'd want to expose my family to what could happen.

This person was either amazingly brave or amazingly stupid.

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:OK

[SternisheFan]

Bullshit! The person filming the incident turned the video over to the family of the deceased, he didn't care about youtube hits. So now, the cheif of police has ordered another 100+ bodycams for his cops, on top of the 100+ they'd already received.

To stand up for what's right does make that person a "Hero".

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.

Re:OK

[Anubis IV]

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.

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.

Re: And It's Illegal to Videotape Police

[Woeful Countenance]

Illinois had a "two-party consent" law which prohibited audio recording, even in public, without the consent of all parties involved. That law was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2014, but until then it was used by police to suppress both audio and video recordings. That particular law was also packaged in both misdemeanor and felony sizes for convenient plea bargaining. Technically, the law didn't prohibit video recording without audio, but the police didn't necessarily make that clear when confiscating recording devices. I'm reluctant to make blanket statements about all 50 states.

"Two-party consent" in Illinois

Decision in People v. Clark (PDF)