Here’s a big thank you to amateur Spielbergs

I really never thought I’d say this, but …

Thank God for people with their video cameras.

I was never a fan of people pulling out their phones and shooting video of anything and everything.

There would be somebody’s video of a fire on TV or somebody almost drowning or some kind of a hassle on an airplane during a flight, and one thought would come to mind.

Why are these imbeciles shooting video, I wondered? Why aren’t they helping? Their iPhone video camera won’t turn them into Steven Spielberg.

Turns out, they are helping. A lot.

Thank God for people with their cellphone cameras. If nothing else, the cameras have helped us all see when people who have power — such as police officers — do something really awful.

We had two recent cases in Broward that were enough to make you lose your cookies if you saw the video.

There was the video of Fort Lauderdale police officer Victor Ramirez pushing and slapping a homeless man, Bruce Laclair, to the ground. The Broward State Attorney’s Office last week filed three misdemeanor charges against Ramirez.

And then we had the video of Broward sheriffs’ deputy Christopher Johnson dragging a mentally incompetent woman through a hallway in the courthouse by the shackles around her ankles. On the video you can hear the woman screaming in pain. Johnson was placed on restricted duty pending an Internal Affairs investigation.

And now, we have the horrible sight — in a video shot by a bystander — of a white South Carolina officer apparently shooting a fleeing black man in the back several times. The incident started as a traffic stop over a faulty brake light.

The cellphone video shows the officer walking toward Walter Lamer Scott after shooting him, and then ordering him to put his hands behind his back. When Scott doesn’t move — understandable, since he’s been shot in the back several times — the officer, Michael Thomas Slager, pulls his arms back and cuffs him. The video contradicted Slager’s explanation of events, and Slager has been charged with murder.

In all these cases, and who knows how many more nation- wide, the hero is the person with the video camera.

Granted, video doesn’t tell the whole story. And all these officers, who have a difficult and dangerous job that most of us wouldn’t do, will get their day in court.

But you want to know where we would be if we did not have video?

We’d have one side of the story, that’s where. We would have the police officer’s side, and we’d be forced to believe it, because there would be nothing visual to refute it.

We’d have police saying they had to act like they did because their life was in danger.

We’d have police saying the suspect was acting up, and he had no other choice.

We’d have police saying that as hard as they tried, they simply couldn’t get the person to stop without shooting.

And we’d have a lot of terrible actions by police going unpunished. And probably unknown.

We give police incredible power and authority, and the vast majority of times, they use it wisely. They use it to make sure people are safe. They use it to protect themselves when they are in danger.

But public trust in police judgment and how they are acting is not exactly at a high level these days. There have been enough incidents, almost always with racial overtones, to make people wonder if some cops really know what they are doing.

Cops have to be aware by now that everything they do out in the open can and probably is being watched.

That’s a good thing. We should be thankful to those with the cellphone cameras.