Lauderdale cop forgets lesson of Minneapolis

We’re not asking for enlightenment. Or a sudden demonstration of empathy by street cops turned hard by years of dealing with society’s castoffs.

But modern life would be considerably less contentious if police officers were mindful of that old Yippie chant from the 1960s: “The whole world is watching.”

Because, indeed, the world watches, records, shares, impugns.

There’s no escape. Digital recording devices have become so ubiquitous that surrendering to unseemly impulses in public spaces has become downright stupid.

Not just cops, but anyone concerned about their standing in the community has reason not to stray into opprobrium. Throw a tantrum laced with racist insults in a fastfood joint or lie to a 911 operator that you’ve been threatened by a black man in Central Park, or scream COVID-19 conspiracy theories at a Publix clerk who insisted that shoppers wear masks, and surely someone in the vicinity will be brandishing a smart phone in record mode.

For police officers, forgetting that they work under perpetual video surveillance can be as consequential as last week’s national headlines.

The video that exposed the brutality of George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis also captured the police officers’ strange indifference to their coming infamy. Officer Derek Chauvin, who kept his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds, and three fellow cops seemed utterly unconcerned by the angry witnesses with cellphones. And now, thanks to incontrovertible video evidence, all four face criminal charges.

That same video brought angry protesters out in more than 100 cities and set off days of chaos and confrontation. You’d think that it might have sunk in: Chances are that in 2020, incidents of brutal policing, even rude policing, will reverberate through social media.

But last Sunday, during a confrontation between cops and protesters on Las Olas Boulevard, amid so many cell phones and TV cameras, a Fort Lauderdale police officer angrily shoved a kneeling protester, sending the woman tumbling over. A day later, Officer Steven Pohorence was suspended, not so much for the shove, but for the video of the shove and the ensuing public outrage. He should have known: The world was watching.

Protesters first adopted the slogan during the tumultuous Democratic National Convention in 1968, chanting, “The whole world is watching,” as TV crews filmed Chicago police clubbing protesters.

In 1991, it wasn’t the police beating of Rodney King that set off horrific riots across Los Angeles. It was video — shot with a Sony camcorder from a nearby balcony — that sparked the uprising.

If the King riots were portent, too few cops noticed. Only a few police officers resort to unnecessary violence, of course, but recordings of their misdeeds spread through social media like California wildfires. Anyone with a cellphone or computer can watch the inexplicable, gut-wrenching police killings of Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Christian Taylor, Samuel Dubose, Breonna Taylor.

It’s not just fatalities that grab viewers. Australians were able to watch on live television Monday as federal park police officers attacked a clearly credentialed Aussie TV crew during that now infamous clearing of Lafayette Square in Washington. Seven Network reporter Amelia Brace was clubbed with a truncheon, tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. Cameraman Tim Myers was hit with a riot shield and punched in the face. Most of this on live television, with the anchors back home watching in stunned disbelief. “Nothing short of wanton thuggery,” the network’s news director said.

By Wednesday, two federal park officers were suspended. Did they suppose that attacking a TV crew during a live broadcast might go unnoticed?

All of us now populate a kind of infinite mosaic of digital images, composed with bits of video fetched from smartphones, Go-Pros, security cams, doorbell cams, police body cams, automobile dash cams.

The FBI launched a site this week where anyone who records criminal activity during these protests can post their videos. Meanwhile, the ACLU launched a “mobile justice” app to receive videos of police misconduct.

Turns out that the surveillance state that so worried George Orwell cuts both ways.

My favorite video of the week was posted on Twitter Sunday night by a digital influencer named JaValle, showing an angry black woman on a Miami street giving hell to some young white Antifa-wannabes in a red Mercedes for driving up to black demonstrators and offering them bricks to throw. “Go on out of here,” she shouted. “You’re stupid!”

Indeed, they were, with their wanton stupidity (along with a clear shot of their car’s license plate) captured on video. And the whole world was watching.

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred