Release cop camera footage
It took extraordinary public efforts — nightly demonstrations, including prayer vigils and the spontaneous takeover of a highway — to get the police department in Charlotte, N.C., to release two videos that officers recorded in the crucial moments leading up to the killing of Keith Lamont Scott.
And now, outrageously, what little the public has been able to view could be the last video cops in North Carolina ever allow to see the light of day, thanks to an ill-conceived state law, which takes effect in a few days, that declares police videos off-limits to public scrutiny.
It’s part of a disturbing national trend of police departments — including the NYPD — attempting to hide the recorded actions of officers from the citizens, taxpayers and elected officials who hired them.
Remember that the protests and unrest in Charlotte centered on two major issues: the police killing of Scott, and a demand to see police recordings of the killing.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department stonewalled for days as demonstrators chanted, “Release the tapes!” — and relented only after Scott’s wife, a witness to the killing, released her own heartbreaking cell phone video, in which she tells cops over and over that her husband is unarmed and on medication, and pleads with them not to shoot.
Were it not for Rakeyia Scott’s recording, God only knows what version of the facts the cops would have put out, or when.
Memories are still fresh in Charlotte of the 2013 killing of Jonathan Ferrell, a man who got into a single-car accident on an unfamiliar road, knocked on a stranger’s door seeking help, and was shot to death by officers who came in response to a 911 call from the startled homeowner.
Ferrell, 24 — an ex-college football star — wasn’t drunk, wasn’t armed, had no drugs in his system and was holding down two jobs at the time of his death. The cop who killed him was charged with manslaughter, but not convicted; the case ended in a hung jury and a legal settlement that included the officer’s resignation.
A few months after the trial, in early 2015, the Charlotte City Council voted unanimously to equip its cops with body cams, and by September of that year reported that all officers had them. But that sensible reform — although far from foolproof — shipwrecked on the rocks of political pressure to keep the actual footage out of public view.
As of next Saturday, police videos in the State of North Carolina will no longer be considered public records: It will require a court order for members of the press and public to overrule the police and see footage. Even family members of victims or others depicted in police videos will be limited to seeing the footage, and won’t get copies of it.
The law was properly condemned as “disgraceful” by Karen Anderson of the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter, who pointed out the obvious truth that “video footage of police shootings can provide crucial evidence of what took place — especially when there are conflicting accounts from police and community members.” That’s putting it mildly. In July 2014, New York and the nation watched in horror as Eric Garner was accosted and choked to death by poorly trained NYPD officers and detectives. Fortunately, a third-party video of the scuffle recorded the tragedy.
In April 2015, we watched the terrifying sight of Walter Scott being shot to death in North Charleston, S.C., by an officer, Michael Slager, who calmly fired into Scott’s back as he fled in panic. The video includes Slager seeming to toss his Taser next to Scott’s body, strongly suggesting the beginning of a coverup.
Slager is under house arrest. He faces state and federal murder and civil rights charges.
Here in New York, NY1 has sued the NYPD to get footage — which the department is trying to keep offlimits — from police body cameras soon to roll out in a limited pilot. It’s a fight that every media and civil rights organization should join and help us win.
About a third of the nation’s 18,000 police departments currently use dashcam and body cameras, with more joining all the time. But it won’t do much good unless we put pressure on local, state and federal authorities to guarantee that these vital public records remain accessible to the public that pays for them.
It’s the only way to ensure the official story we hear from police in controversial cases is the true one.