On October 1, a North Carolina law limiting the release of video of police goes into effect.
Under HB 972, also known as the “Body Cam” bill, recordings from body- or dashboard-mounted cameras can only be released to the public through a court order, instead of via a public records request. Those captured on police audio or video can ask to hear or watch the footage, though authorities can deny that request pending a judge compelling them to comply. Release of recordings to prosecutors would be permitted.
The purported rationale is that it protects the privacy of not only police, but suspects, victims and witnesses. Damn thoughtful of Gov. Pat McCrory to be so concerned with the privacy of defendants. Too bad that nobody’s buying.
But October 1st is more than a week away, and at the moment, Charlotte is burning. Tulsa figured out how to address the loss of trust and faith in its police.
The Police Department in Tulsa, Okla., made the right choice earlier this week when it released video of an officer shooting and killing an unarmed black man named Terence Crutcher, who could be seen raising his hands above his head during much of the encounter.
On Thursday, the Tulsa County district attorney charged that officer with first-degree manslaughter for Mr. Crutcher’s death.
Whether a video proves that the cop wrongfully killed or not, and it may well fail to show that the heinous misconduct some believe happened is accurate, there are two immutable facts: First, government has lost the trust of too many people, or all colors, genders, shoe sizes, to fall back on a press conference assuring them that the cops are great and deserve their devotion.
Second, concealment of video that would show what happened is the clearest message that the cop did wrong. What did you think people were going to believe?
As Walter Katz, San Jose Independent Police Auditor made clear, without video, no cop gets convicted. That’s not to say that video assures a prosecution or a conviction, but the absence of video assures that people are left in a state of disbelief. The old days of rhetoricical arguments, “why would this heroic, trustworthy police officer shoot someone of unsavory character, against whom he had no negative personal feelings, if not for a threat to his life?” are gone.
It worked for a very long time. It no longer works in the age of video. We’ve seen the videos. We know that this is a lie. We know that it happens. You know that it happens too, so let’s cut the crap. And maybe, just maybe, even a judge or two knows that it happens, even if it pains them to admit that the good old days when whatever the cop said was good enough are over.
So where’s the video of the killing of Keith Scott?
By contrast, the Police Department in Charlotte, N.C., has responded in exactly the wrong way to a police officer’s killing on Tuesday of another black man, Keith Scott. It has opted for stonewalling. The department — which has said that Mr. Scott brandished a gun when he was shot dead — has refused to make public the video that might show how the shooting occurred. Already, the city has suffered through several nights of violent protests by citizens enraged at the death of another black man at the hands of the police.
What happened matters. Whether this is the hill on which thousands want to make their stand depends on whether Keith Scott was a righteous shoot or an execution. There is protesting. There is rioting. There is plain old stealing. There are people dying. And it might well be resolved by a video.
Police Chief Kerr Putney added to that anger at a news conference on Thursday when he said that the video did not give him “absolute, definitive, visual evidence that would confirm that a person is pointing a gun,” though he insisted that there was evidence to suggest that the police account of the event was correct.
It Putney is right, then he (or Mayor Jennifer Roberts) is out of his mind. If there is a video that shows the shoot was justified, how do you let your city burn by concealing it? Then again, Putney was very circumspect in his characterization of the video. He “insisted that there was evidence to suggest” the cop side wins. You can’t fit more wiggle words into that statement.
What this sort of equivocating suggests is that release of the video will be sufficiently inconclusive, especially to the untrained eye which fails to see the microscopic nuance that proves cops justified that eludes the non-believers. Despite Putney’s assurances, this video may well fail to calm anybody.
But you can’t put the video genie back in the bottle. No law is going to prevent people from demanding to see with their own eyes what they know exists, what they know may prove that the cops wrongfully killed someone or not. We’re now past buying official assurances and believing.
Some police departments are starting to understand that public trust depends on good faith and openness.
No police department will be capable of earning the public trust by concealment. Those days are gone, and Charlotte burns while Putney conceals.
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The thing that’s really hard for Putney and Roberts to explain is the Charlotte Police Dept. policy which states that a Black man with a book is much more dangerous than a black man with a gun! And what white person taught that n****r to read anyway? We need to shoot that race-traitor too!
I hate these racist motherfuckers. I just hate the fuck out of them!
Note, North Carolina is an Open Carry State, so what exactly is the difference between carrying a legal handgun (if it existed) and a book?
Since you die either way, none.
Open carry (in a holster) doesn’t mean you’re free to brandish, handle, exhibit, etc. the firearm however you want.
So, basically an admission from the police that the video won’t resolve what happened. It will be interesting to see if the origins of the gun can be traced, or if there is no record connecting it to Mr. Scott.
Video has emerged. It ain’t good for the cops. After Scott was down, there is no gun in the picture.
There there is the picture showing the gun that was “found” on the ground.
This is, if you will forgive me, the smoking gun.
Here in Charlotte, we’re taking bets on how long it takes for the Chief to come up with the “oh, the gun was accidentally kicked during our rush to aid Mr. Scott”.
Putney will get to space aliens eventually.
Cop in the red shirt appears to have his left foot on the gun in the video. You can see it in the still frame that shows in your comment. Doesn’t prove it isn’t ‘planted’, but the video and the pic match.
Not seeing it.
And if it was, it would be in the wrong spot.
The gun is not there one second (1:40) and then there the next (1:46). Considering Scott is dead or at least long on his way to dying, one of the cops moved it there.
I live in Raleigh, and a lot of people around here open carry (and I would imagine many more concealed carry). Nobody bats an eye if you walk into a restaurant with a gun on your hip, doesn’t matter if it’s a $5 lunch from McDonalds or a $500 dinner Angus Barn. Even if it is Scott’s gun, so what?
It makes a difference after the cops told him to drop it. Their order may have been baseless, but if he had no gun, he couldn’t comply regardless.
Look at 1:22 of the video. You can see the object in the correct spot (ultimately where that guy in red is standing). Not saying it’s a gun, but it doesn’t magically appear either.
I see a foot. I see a shadow. I see no gun. I can discern no “object” in the darkness.
Pause at 1:25 then, closer shot of an object next to the officers foot. I’m not saying it’s a gun either, but nothing “magically” showed up after the end of the video. Object was there the whole time, it’s the perspective and players that changed.
Sorry Scott, was watching the NYT version of the video on Youtube. The NBC video you linked would be at time 1:05. While the wife is walking towards the officers. Again, mea culpa
There has been a frame-by-frame breakdown of the video. What you see is a black pair of gloves, not a gun. There is no gun in the video. CMPD is scrambling right now. Badly.
“What you see is a black pair of gloves, not a gun.”
Quite possibly — but it’s the same object depicted in the ‘gun’ photo.
Believing is seeing.
I really doubt it’s a pair of gloves. You see the officer trying them on far after you can see an object in the video. Also, the positions on the street don’t line up. Is it a gun? Who the hell knows, terrible pictures and awkward distances have no way of telling with the object actually is.
This isn’t a “really doubt” sort of thing, where each person gets to make up whatever it is he thinks he sees. Robert is down there, where there is far more intense effort and focus on what the vid shows. He’s not telling you his personal opinion, but what the best analysis is showing.
On the other hand, there’s this:
And that supposed best analysis is focusing on the wrong spot. If you continue to watch that video you see the dropped glove being picked up (2:10 in the NBC raw video). At that point one can reasonably assume that the object in the previous image isn’t a glove. As I mentioned earlier, the object that is in the released photo is highlighted in the video by Scott’s wife, in the same location as the released photo, and is subsequently covered up by the officer in red. The object is at 1:05 in the NBC video you’ve linked to above. It shows it in the exact same spot as the released photo. There is no need to make up anything as it’s all there in the video.
I make no assumption that the object is a gun, I just take exception to the claim that the “gun” was planted because in the video the object isn’t seen when people want it to be seen. They are just looking at the wrong time.
You’ve beaten this horse to death, Mike. We’re all watching the video. We see what we see. Your repeating what you see doesn’t change anything. Give it a rest.
Police video:
See :58 no gun. 1:30 Cop:”Somebody get my, uh, bag, so I can get in it…some equipment.”
Chief: It was marijuana. CMPD live twitted press conf then deleted. Transcript and video of press conf.
yes I agree. The gun or whatever it is appears at 1:05 and is there until the guy in red straddles it and hides it with his left foot. It wasn’t there at 1:04. Very strange that he seems to be hiding the gun from Mrs. Scott because he knows that she knows that her husband had no gun and she has already told them she was recording.
I think the second picture may have been taken much, much later. I’m not an expert, but it looks like the shadow of the pole is much longer in the second picture. Note that this speculation is worth exactly what you paid for it.
Perhaps the officers shouting “drop the gun” weren’t talking to Mr. Scott at all.
More likely he had something in his hands (his family said a book) and to a cop, any unknown object is potential a gun.
If you slow mo the video a black object appears on the ground where the still picture shows it. At 1:04 there is no black object and it appears at 1:05 1:06. It is visible until the guy in red hides it with his shoe. At the end of the video you can see it clearly. I tried to zoom in but it gets to cloudy. Someone with the right equipment could probably find something. I think a wife of twenty years would know if her husband were in the habit of carrying a loaded gun to pick up his children. Who put this gun in the picture at 1:06. My heart goes out to Mrs. Scott.
Our country is reaching a turning point with the People’s relationship with the police and the judicial system. Faith has been lost that the system is in any way right or fair. They see poor minorities (not just the black, but poor asians, latinos, and per capita by far-the native americans.) getting gunned down or brutalized on the altar of the war on drugs, while the rich seem to walk away with hardly a slap on the wrist. The question facing cities large and small is grim. When the forces we see unleashed in Charlotte erupt nationwide in a revolt against authorities, will they work with their citizens and face trials and tribulations reminiscent of the civil rights era, or will they stand with the status quo and burn? In the last 18 months several smaller cities down south have suffered what Charlotte is and Baltimore recently has.
I thought we were at a turning point after Ferguson, as it appeared that Americans regardless of race were finally recognizing how minorities were being treated by the system. Then BLM blew it, by going beyond the killing of unarmed black men to microaggressions and cries over the names of buildings on campus, not to mention the murders of cops.
Much as I hope this will refocus people on the fact that people are dying, and it’s not just sad feelz, it’s hard to recapture national sympathies and understanding once lost. And yes, it’s not just blacks, but without broad-based support including middle-class white America (which despises this politically correct, social justice crap), we lack the critical mass to force reform.
That is sadly true, hence my opinion of the grim choice, bad or worse.
BLM blew it because BLM is not really about equal justice for black people, but is instead about trying to leverage racial politics to secure a host of special rights for black people.
BLM started out as one idea about the lives of black people at the hands of police, and was usurped by other interests. It’s unfair to speak of BLM as if it was a cohesive movement with leadership and formed goals. It’s not. It’s a slogan, used by many people for many purposes, some sound and others not.
Wage peace.
And yet, BLM blew it.
“Special rights for black people,”?…. My guess is that you just don’t “get it”. Ha. Black people, and others of disparate appearance or heritage, have no rights to begin with, irregardless of what the Constituitional textbooks and the lawprawfs say. Yea, we have the ACLU and the “Supreme Court”, a couple of those books on our bookshelf which are full of jargon neverending, but meaningless in the real world of boots on the ground and/or mandatory court appearances with you public pretender.
[For the record, I am A WASP, but hardly a Johnny-Come-Lately to the bowel M0veMent
of criminaln injustice in Amerika, the land of the FreeLoaders and Home of the Brave New World. Can U Say TrumpMaster Flash? We had to go thru the brutal routinacious, mind-numbing criminal justice system ourselves before our eyes were opened wide-shut.] There’s nothing like spending a couple of nite in the county or city jail to open your eyes to injustices around us on a daily/petty basis.
Broken-Windows theorists can go the Hell in our book. Bill Bratton-breath! Sure looks good on paper, or ComStat. Too many compustatists with too much time on their hands–trust it–Makes Johnny a dull boy indeed, if not stewpid and/or incompetent.
In the event that there was any doubt, we’re not big fans of the uniformed police, who who clock in and clocke out with nary a shiver of doubt about their role in society. God save the Queen! As long as they make it home for supper in time. This is getting crazy, as we/I predicted it would in the coming insane election cycle where two morons are vying for the highest office in the land. Go Figure!
P.S., Now I feel better, as if you did not know or suspect!