Story Time with Bob
The first police shooting in Portland filmed by body cameras has arrived, and it’s sad to see what the cops are doing. They’re using highly edited, neatly packaged portions of the camera footage to support their side of the story, and holding the rest back because “investigation.”
"I fully understand that this raises a lot of questions," said Portland Police Chief Bob Day during a news conference on Monday. "There are a lot of gaps. I want to recognize that right on the front end. That's intentional."
Day pointed to the ongoing investigation as the reason for that.
"Any time we use force in this organization, it is relevant that we take the highest level of review," Day said. "That we demonstrate commitment to the process. Accountability both internally and externally. And I'm grateful that in this particular case, everybody was able to walk away. We'll let the system play out from there."
Having the officers wear the cams is doubtlessly a good thing, but as far as I’m concerned, all the raw video should be streaming live on the internet 24/7. If you can’t justify your every action, you shouldn’t be wearing a badge and have a license to kill.
For decades the Portland police have been digging a hole for themselves with respect to credibility. Here’s a chance for them to stem the tide, but they won’t. “It’s under investigation, so we can’t show you all of it.” All that does is raise questions. Then they wonder why people like Jo Ann Hardesty and Carmen Rubio get elected to office.
Fortunately, the guy they shot is not dead. He's out of the hospital and in the county jail. He pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of burglary, menacing, unlawful use of a weapon, and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
I think the real test is if journalists are able to do a freedom of information request to the PPB and get all of the associated raw footage in a timely manner. I think the best practice for cops is to release a highly edited video that's 1-2 minutes long, then release the longer uncut (or minimally edited) footage on Youtube ASAP. Anything less than that is outrageous given how many police departments around the country do this, there's just not a legitimate excuse that Cops can't find some administrative intern to upload the files.
ReplyDeleteAnother good idea would be to take the raw footage and recordings out of the hands of PPB and require that it be stored with another Bureau entirely, like the Bureau of Technology Services (the IT department), so there's no CYA from the PPB not releasing something in a timely manner.
The reason you don't want to stream the video is because there are a lot of domestic violence calls and people in confidential situations (like their family member just got injured). It's the same reason you act differently when someone has a cell phone camera pointed in your face. We have to protect the privacy of people who aren't suspects.
The fix for this is simple. Make it department policy that in all officer involved shootings, all unedited video of the incident will be published within 72 hours or the commanding officer in charge of the investigation faces misconduct charges for violating a direct order.
ReplyDeleteIt's digital video. It won't take 3 days after a shooting to plug the camera into a laptop and save the file. And that file is public property, filmed by public employees using publicly owned equipment while on the job, and in public streets.
But we can file that in the over-stuffed drawer labeled "things that won't happen".