Police plan videos after shootings

The Phoenix Police Department has begun to produce videos with summaries of police shootings that include on-body camera footage, 911 calls and a narration of the events that led to the shooting.

The first one was published Wednesday on the Police Department’s social media platforms and its website. It details an Aug. 27 non-fatal

shooting of Jesus Samuel Rodriguez on Palm Lane, near 36th Street north of McDowell Road.

“It is intended to provide additional transparency for the community in a critical incident involving the Phoenix Police Department,” spokesman Sgt. Tommy Thompson stated in a news release. “It is not intended to draw conclusions concerning the actions of the officers involved in the incident, which is still being investigated.”

He said the videos won’t replace the initial briefings the Police Department would normally give during the course of a police shooting investigation.

But some are concerned that these produced videos will delay or be released in place of the full unredacted videos and records.

“Committing to release edited recordings of police violence is not justice. It’s hard to see how these compilation videos are anything more than propaganda to justify officer violence,” said Ben Laughlin, an organizer with the advocacy group Poder in Action. “We are hoping the full recordings, without edits, will also be released.”

Phoenix police have led the nation in shootings, with 44 in 2018. So far this year, Phoenix police have been involved in 12 shootings, nine of which have been fatal, according to the city.

Under former Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery, the County Attorney’s Office routinely blocked the release of police shooting videos and records in numerous cases. The office decides if a shooting is legally justified.

Gov. Doug Ducey recently appointed Montgomery to the Arizona Supreme Court. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors earlier this month appointed Allister Adel to take over as county attorney.

Phoenix is now following other lawenforcement departments that have uploaded body-camera footage of its police shootings on their websites.

The Los Angeles Police Department in 2017 began uploading details of its lethal-force cases and in 2018 started to upload body-camera footage. The Flagstaff Police Department has also done something similar.

County Attorney’s Office blocks videos

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office under Montogomery successfully blocked the release of police shooting videos and other criminal case records for years.

In many of those cases, Montgomery’s prosecutors argued that the integrity of a legal case is more important than the public’s need to be informed of the case.

For example, under Montgomery’s direction, prosecutors blocked the release of a video depicting the Jan. 18, 2016, fatal shooting of 26-year-old Daniel Shaver by former Mesa police Officer Philip “Mitch” Brailsford.

Brailsford was later fired and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the shooting. The video was released publicly after a jury acquitted Brailsford, nearly two years after the incident.

Most recently, the County Attorney’s Office blocked the release of video footage captured on a police helicopter that showed Phoenix Officers David Norman and Kristopher Bertz fatally shooting 19year-old Jacob Harris.

The video was accidentally released to KPNX, the local NBC affiliate, which aired the footage. But since, a judge has sealed the video from further release.

And in the case of 14-year-old Antonio Arce, who was shot and killed by former Tempe police Officer Joseph Jaen on Jan. 15, the unedited footage has not been released.

The case has been part of an ongoing legal battle between Danny Ortega, the lawyer for Arce’s family, and Tempe police, who said the police report, 911 calls and the rest of the body-camera footage will not be released until after the County Attorney’s Office finishes reviewing the case.

Thompson didn’t directly answer a question about how this change in the procedure may affect the County Attorney’s Office’s usual practice or whether the Police Department would work with the prosecutor’s office to roll out the videos.

This “is a Phoenix Police Department production,” he wrote in an email.

Police still have ‘obligation to respond to a records request’

Amanda Steele, a spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, said the prosecutor’s office is “committed to ensuring that agencies are informed of the ethical rules that prosecutors must follow” to make sure an ongoing criminal case is not prejudiced.

But she said Adel will take a different approach in regard to public records than Montgomery did.

“The decision on what and when to release critical incident information to the public will be made by the law enforcement agency,” Steele said in a statement.

Laughlin said he’d like to see families of those shot by police given access to unedited body-camera footage and unredacted police reports before such materials are released to the public.

“The department has a history of withholding these types of footage and recordings from victims of police violence,” Laughlin said. “Our hope is families and victims will get full access with time to review all recordings before these compilation videos are produced.”

Dan Barr, a Phoenix First Amendment lawyer and an expert in Arizona’s public-records law, said the public will have to decide whether the Phoenix police-produced videos provide an objective view of a police shooting.

Still, he said, these videos don’t take away the responsibility of the Police Department to follow the law.

“They still have to comply with the public-records law,” Barr said. “If they want to create these videos to explain what happened, they’re certainly free to do so. But that doesn’t replace their obligation to respond to a records request.”

Shots fired in the air

Phoenix police produced an 11-minute video of the Aug. 27 shooting. It starts with Chief Jeri Williams detailing what it will include.

Then Detective Luis Samudio provides narration of the 911 call, the Google Map image of where the shooting happened and two pieces of body-camera footage.

“Conclusion about whether the actions of the officers are consistent with department policy and the law will not be made until all facts are known and the investigation is complete,” Samudio says in the video.

In the video, a 911 caller reports to an operator that she heard and saw someone fire rounds into the air from a rifle. Surveillance footage shows someone holding a rifle and firing.

Three officers responded to an apartment. Jose A. Jarvis, the officer who shot, did not turn on his body camera, Samudio says.

In the video, one officer knocks on the metal screen door and identifies himself as Phoenix police. As soon as a man opens the main door, Jarvis shoots through the screen door.

Samudio says in the video that the man, later identified as Jesus Samuel Rodriguez, 34, was holding an AR-15style rifle modified with a bump stock when he answered the door. The body-camera footage doesn’t show this because Jarvis was in front of the officers who did have their body cameras on.

Rodriguez is not hit by any of the bullets. The officers back away and tell him to drop the gun.

“I dropped it,” Rodriguez is heard saying in the video. “I’m sorry.”

The body-camera video shows a rifle inside the apartment’s door on the floor near the doorway. Rodriguez eventually gets on his knees and is handcuffed, the video shows.

Rodriguez is facing charges of discharging a firearm, prohibited possessor and aggravated assault on a police officer.

In Arizona, it’s common for a person shot at by police to be charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, even if the person didn’t touch the officer.

Of 327 people who survived a police shooting from 2011 to 2018, nearly half were charged with aggravated assault on a police officer, according to an Arizona Republic analysis of 600 police shootings statewide. The crime can carry a sentence of up to 12 years in prison.

“Committing to release edited recordings of police violence is not justice. It’s hard to see how these compilation videos are anything more than propaganda to justify officer violence. We are hoping the full recordings, without edits, will also be released.” Ben Laughlin

An organizer with the advocacy group Poder in Action