BALTIMORE — Don't rush to condemn the cops the next time you see a citizen video of a police shooting — you may not be getting the entire story and the odds are good the clip was distributed widely to fan hatred of the police.
During the past decade social media and television news outlets have been saturated by videos of police shootings, and of course they horrify viewers. But sometimes what you see is not all of what happened, or has been doctored.
It's important to understand that from a psychological level, these kinds of videos engage people in an immediate, emotional way, according to Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the independent, nonprofit Media Psychology Center.
"We also have to remember that media, live streaming, etc, are curated by even as simple a thing as when you turned on the recorder and where you pointed the camera” Rutledge notes. “They don't (and can't) show full context; they show a selective point of view," she wrote recently.
"Knowing what happens on video after it happens is totally different than knowing what the cop was thinking and what he will say he was thinking," said Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former assistant district attorney in New York City.
"The video obviously could be damning in terms of a criminal case, but the ultimate question is, is there malice? Is it totally unwarranted under any view of the evidence? The video does not speak for itself."
In some cases, it most certainly doesn't.
For example, a shocking cell phone video posted in YouTube showed police officers in Hawthorne, Calif., fatally shooting a dog. The Southern California police department was bombarded with angry calls and e-mails, including death threats that prompted the department to take the three officers involved off street duty.
However, a another video taken on a cell phone by a second witness at the scene, shows more of the interactions the dog owner had with police before the shooting. It also more clearly shows the officers’ actions before shooting the dog, a large Rottweiler. In the video, the shooting officer reaches his hand toward the dog and hesitates before shooting it four times.
In another case, soon after the city of Chicago released audio-free dashcam video of a white officer shooting a black teen 16 times, a 35-second excerpt with sound appeared online.
The Associated Press reported that viewers of the video “could see and supposedly hear Officer Jason Van Dyke firing nine rapid shots at a suspect, pausing for nearly 10 seconds, then firing seven more as the suspect lay on the ground.”
The video reportedly garnered almost half a million views on social media. The AP noted that it added further fuel to already simmering suspicions that police were covering something up.
Support Canada Free Press
Private experts, the Chicago police and an AP analysis all concluded the video was bogus.
Ed Primeau, a Michigan-based audio and video forensics expert with 32 years in the field, examined it at his lab and concluded: “It’s fake. Hands down." Van Dyke was not charged with first-degree murder until more than a year after the shooting.
These situations illustrate that the existence of a video is not full proof that police acted wrongly. In many cases, they are a good start in cases that surely should be investigated fully before authorities rush to judgment. However, a good start is all they are in many cases.
These videos should be authenticated and their context established. Witnesses should be interviewed thoroughly and the cops involved questioned.
If the police acted wrongly, they should be punished, but not solely on the basis of one cell phone recording. On balance, these videos arguably can hurt the cause of justice more than they help it.
Meanwhile, there's chance that the continued wide distribution of these videos will seriously affect the cops' willingness to carry out their duties, similar to what happened in Baltimore last year.
When city officials wouldn't let the police fully defend themselves during the Baltimore riots, and several officers were hurt as a result, the cops started doing the bare minimum required to keep their jobs.
As a result, violent crime rates soared, people died, and the city still hasn't recovered.
Cops are realistic people, and they don't expect people to love them; but they do require respect and some cooperation.
If these videos cause enough hatred of the police that they can't do their jobs and give up trying, we're all in trouble.
Consider what happened in Dallas. Surely they were one cause of a man's hatred that culminated with five police officers being murdered.
Whitt Flora, an independent journalist, covered the White House for The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch and was chief congressional correspondent for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. Readers may write him at 319 Shagbark Rd., Middle River, Md. 21220.
