In sight, in mind

Just in time for the launch of the NYPD’s body-camera pilot program this week emerges a chilling video showing just how essential the devices are for ensuring police accountability and public safety. The footage shows a Grand Rapids, Mich., police officer stopping his cruiser near five middle school-aged boys emerging from a rec center — then drawing his gun, demanding they drop to the ground and holding them for several minutes.

The cops are responding to a witness report — also captured on video — of a gun that one boy may have handed to another. The boys comply — with their prone bodies and palpable cries of terror picked up by the eight police car dash-cams and 18 body cameras on the scene.

“Can you please put the gun down?” one boy begs. Another cries, “I do not want to die, bro.” As one fearfully pleas, “Don’t shoot me,” his friend tries to calm him: “We are not about to die; we didn’t do nothing.”

After ascertaining the boys are unarmed, the police call their parents.

Grand Rapids Police Chief David Rahinsky stands behind his officers and told the Grand Rapids Press, “I think when the community sees what we’ve seen — with the body worn camera footage; I think they’ll have a different opinion.” That’s a characterization that a local and national public will now have to determine — and the video makes that possible.

So it will soon go in New York, now that U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres on Friday tossed an objection from groups hoping to delay the NYPD’s long-awaited body-cam test in order to expand camera use and public access to footage.

New York cops will tape plenty: when they question people, and in any encounters more serious. Like the Grand Rapids police did, the NYPD will release footage as requested under freedom of information laws.

New York’s body cams will show the best and the worst of the NYPD, including disturbing images and incidents — with utter necessity.