Police release first bodycam footage from Floyd protests
In the first publicly released body-worn camera footage of San Jose police squaring off with protesters after the death of George Floyd, officers in one video are holding down a man who is saying “I can’t breathe” and in another clip an officer is yelling “Hell yeah! Let’s get some.”
Nearly an hour’s worth of footage released by the San Jose Police Department on Sept. 11 offers the first glimpse from officers’ perspectives of three highly criticized altercations between police and protesters during downtown demonstrations that began in late May.
The three videos — each lasting about 20-30 minutes and showing bodycam footage from multiple officers at the scenes — show an officer on a motorcycle striking a pedestrian, officers using force against a man who was pulled behind a skirmish line and Officer Jared Yuen taunting and spewing expletives at protesters.
The release of the videos comes about three weeks after San Jose police Chief Eddie Garcia said it could take up to a year to make any of the protest bodycam footage public — and just days before San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo was preparing to use a rarely invoked authority to direct the city manager to more rapidly produce the videos, with or without the blessing of the police department.
“We hope releasing these videos will provide the public more clarity into each of these incidents,” Garcia wrote in a statement. “Each video is only one piece of information used to fully understand a complex event.
Some opinions and conclusions may be affected after watching certain videos; others will not.”
Videos of the three incidents captured by the media and community members have been widely circulated in recent months, and the police department previously had posted montages of the publicly available videos on a newly created page on its website for protest videos. But the footage released Sept. 11 provides more context around each incident and allows viewers to watch them from the officers’ point of view.
In late May, videos went viral of Yuen, a six-year San Jose Police Department veteran, making aggressive comments toward demonstrators protesting the death of Floyd. In multiple videos recorded by community members, Yuen — who
drew immediate and widespread rebuke from thousands of people across the country — could be seen taunting and shouting at protesters as he manned downtown skirmish lines.
His behavior sparked resounding calls for his firing, but as of Sept. 11, the police department is still conducting an internal investigation into his conduct, and he continues to work in an administrative role with the department.
One of the videos released Friday depicts that scene on May 29, when officers in a skirmish line are facing a large group of protesters. Officers identify a suspect who they believe threw a bottle at an officer and attempt to arrest him. In the footage, Yuen can be heard saying “Let’s get this motherf—” and “Hell yeah, let’s get some” before rush
ing toward the suspect.
Another high-profile incident involves the video of a police motorcycle hitting a fleeing man, first published on Twitter in early June. The video originally posted by a member of the public did not show what happened before or after the collision.
The police department’s video released Sept. 11 states that officers were attempting to arrest the man on suspicion of felony burglary after he allegedly tried to break into a nearby bank. Footage shows a handful of officers chasing the man down a sidewalk before he darts between two parked cars and into the street, where a police motorcycle rams into him from behind and knocks him to the ground.
The bodycam footage of the officer on the motorcycle does not include audio. San Jose police Sgt. Christian Camarillo said an officer’s camera can pick up 30 seconds before he or she hits record but not audio during that time. In this case, the officer must have hit record after striking the pedestrian and therefore his audio cannot be heard but the video was retrieved.
Under the department’s policy, officers must have their cameras on “stand-by” mode during the entirety of their shift but are only required to record once an officer expects to come into conduct with an individual, Camarillo said.
The third case covered by the bodycam footage involved an officer striking a protester, David Baca — who approached a skirmish line after an order to disperse was issued — in the Adam’s apple with a long baton.
According to a GoFundme page set up by his wife, Baca had approached the officers to get a closer look and take down the name and badge number of one officer in particular who he believed was aiming his rounds of rubber bullets at people of color.
Baca allegedly called the officer a racist before he was shot with multiple rubber bullets and hit with the baton. Baca’s knee was shattered, and he was later taken to the hospital for emergency surgery, according to the Gofundme page.
Footage released by the police department on Friday shows that after he was struck with the baton, Baca attempted to grab it from the officer’s hands and started swinging at him before other officers swarmed him. Baca can be heard yelling “I can’t breathe” while pinned down.
Raj Jayadev, co-founder and longtime director of San Jose-based Silicon Valley De-bug, said the release of the videos “looked like an organization trying to sanitize their prior action by changing the narrative.”
In a defiant memo last month, Liccardo asked City Manager Dave Sykes to hasten the release of body camera videos for the three high-interest incidents during the protests in late May through early June — along with 10 minutes before and after the altercations to provide viewers with more context. The rest of the City Council was expected to authorize the mayor’s memo at its meeting on Tuesday, giving the police department two weeks to abide and release the videos to the public, but the police department decided to release it ahead of the meeting.
The council on Tuesday was scheduled to discuss a request from the mayor for the city to create a new ordinance that would require the release of bodyworn camera footage for incidents that the council deems to be of “extraordinary public interest.”
Liccardo said Sept. 11 that he appreciated the police department’s decision to release the videos early and was looking forward to making the timely release of bodycam footage related to high-interest incidents easier in the future.
“The public has a right to know, as does certainly the council as policymakers,” Liccardo said in an interview Sept. 11. “If we’re going to bother to be forthright with the public and fair to the officers, then we need to allow the public to see the entire context of an incident and not simply five seconds of some use of force against an individual.”