By Jay Stanley
Last year I wrote about “acting and directing with police body cameras” — how police officers are likely to increasingly learn to manipulate the photographic record that their cameras create. A stark case study in that kind of manipulation can be found in video of a 2014 arrest in Florida that was released in January and recently came to my attention. It’s the kind of video that everyone should watch in order to become sophisticated and properly skeptical consumers of video evidence.
There are two videos of the arrest: footage from a nearby surveillance camera, and footage from a body camera worn by one of the officers. I could describe the video but it’s short, so I suggest you just watch it before reading further. A local NBC affiliate produced this 70-second produced package with explanatory voiceover, and the raw surveillance camera and bodycam footage is also online.
It’s hard to imagine what more a suspect could do to avoid being beaten by the police. Derrick Price not only puts his hands high in the air, he then proceeds to lie spread-eagle on the pavement before any of the Marion County sheriff’s deputies reach him. And yet the deputies beat him. What appears to be taking place in this video (as in many others, including the granddaddy of them all, the Rodney King video) is that police officers, angry at a suspect for fleeing (and perhaps disobeying previous orders to stop), have taken it upon themselves to punish the suspect for that disobedience. Punishment for crimes, including fleeing arrest and failure to obey a lawful order, is something we leave to the criminal justice system, which for all its problems has more due process procedures than the whims of angry policemen. The fact that five officers fell upon Price without hesitation or question suggests that such beatings may be routine. As I’ve written elsewhere, one of the things the video revolution in policing may be doing is exposing a disconnect between what a significant number police officers appear to view as standard, acceptable practice in dealing with suspects, and what the larger public views as proper and acceptable.
But the main reason I think this is a video everyone should watch is that the view provided by the surveillance camera is strikingly different from — and clearer than — the view provided by the body camera. The surveillance camera is higher up and, unlike the bodycam, captures the wide-angle of the scene. This is an important reminder of the limitations of cameras worn on the body of officers who are in the thick of the action.
But the difference between the two videos is also a result of intentional manipulation by the officers beating Price, who repeatedly yell “stop resisting!” as they kick and punch his unmoving body. And the body camera never properly captures the beating of Price, actually facing fully away from the action at some points. It is hard to tell how intentional this was on the part of the officer wearing the camera, but it’s easy to imagine that the officer knew that what his colleagues were doing was not acceptable, and intentionally sought to avoid videotaping them.
This tactic of yelling “stop resisting” when assaulting people who are not resisting appears repeatedly in videos from all across the country, which makes one suspect that the tactic is openly discussed and shared among police officers—and that this kind of abuse is disturbingly widespread.
Two other notes on the situation: first, while this video was finally released in compliance with Florida’s open-records law, it was kept secret for 16 months, an unjustifiably long time. Second, I would note that the camera was turned on very late into the incident, and turned off too early. Since this arrest followed a SWAT raid and a chase, under any good policy the officer’s camera should have been turned on long before the beating of Price began, and should have continued (as I discuss here and as we recommend) until “the encounter has fully concluded and the law enforcement officer leaves the scene.”
In our model policy we recommend strong action against officers who intentionally obstruct or interfere with their body cameras’ ability to accurately capture video, including a) appropriate departmental disciplinary action, b) a rebuttable evidentiary presumption in favor of defendants who reasonably claim that exculpatory evidence was destroyed or not captured, and c) a similar presumption in favor of plaintiffs suing over police misconduct.
Price was very lucky, and the officers unlucky, that the arrest took place in clear view of a surveillance camera. If the bodycam footage was the only evidence, the deputies’ subsequent lies about Price’s alleged violent resistance to his arrest would almost certainly have been believed.
At the same time, for those skeptical of body cameras it’s worth noting that he would likely have been no worse off with only the bodycamera video than he would have been with no video at all. Or, if every officer at the scene wore a camera, the situation would likely have also been clear — or, with the deputies knowing they were being recorded, wouldn’t have happened at all.
But it did, and the divergence between the two video streams that captured the arrest serves as an important lesson and reminder of the limits of video evidence, as well as the need for skepticism toward police accounts of what such videos portray.
Jay Stanley is Senior Policy Analyst for the ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project
Has there been a link set to the videos? Am I just missing it?
Here they are in order produced video/raw footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTBJ-SQBsgY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYXnuDHlSp0
I guess the questions are…
If fleeing from the cops justification for rough treatment by the cops when apprehended? Consider that a suspect fleeing the cops puts other people in more danger as the cops pursue the suspect.
If no, then are we willing to accept that this will certainly inspire more criminal suspects to flee from the cops, and endanger more people as the cops pursue them?
If yes, then it seems that we should be focused on deciding what are reasonable protocols for these situations instead of harvesting the few cases out of thousands a day that can be used to support the “cops are all racist” Democrat political campaign platform.
Frankly, (because I am) anyone that flees the cops is automatically guilty of a crime, guilty of endangering others, and should expect it to end badly when apprehended. Said another way, if a suspect immediately complies with officers and that suspect is treated badly or roughly I absolutely expect the cops to be held accountable and punished in some way. However, if the suspect flees and the cops have to give chase, I am willing to accept and even expect some rough handling by the cops for one – to make sure the suspect is not just resting to gather energy to flee again… and two – to make an impression on the suspect that he/she should never flee.
If many of these young male suspects had responsible fathers at home, I would expect their beating at home for what they have done to be much more severe than what they get from the cops. And in fact, knowing about the beating they would get a home would be severe, they would probably not participate in the actions that caused the cops to suspect and detain them. And in consideration of this, are the cops just being fatherly here? Maybe these are “scared straight” beatings being delivered from a subconscious place of fatherly concern for these misbehaving boys.
It is not the job of police to “punish” those who flee. In fact, it’s a crime. (Assuming that they’re no longer a threat, which is sometimes a gray area.)
Reminds me of those who support beatings in prison, whether it’s from guards or other inmates. This is also a crime.
Having said that, it must be difficult to be an officer, in this day and age. Challenging balancing act, to say the least. And, likely difficult to totally control emotions in such situations.
Agree with all that.
If you agree with all that, then you disagree with your own diatribe immediately preceding Ron’s comments. Are you okay, Frank?
Well you appear to have some reading comprehension disabilities Dave Hart. Try again.
I guess I do too:
“Frankly, (because I am) anyone that flees the cops is automatically guilty of a crime, guilty of endangering others, and should expect it to end badly when apprehended. ”
“However, if the suspect flees and the cops have to give chase, I am willing to accept and even expect some rough handling by the cops for one – to make sure the suspect is not just resting to gather energy to flee again… and two – to make an impression on the suspect that he/she should never flee.”
You’re second statement is not in line with the law. And not in line with Ron’s comment “It is not the job of police to “punish” those who flee. In fact, it’s a crime.”
Where did I even suggest that the cops punish suspects? I didn’t. I said I support some rough handling justified by the evidence that this is a suspect prone to fleeing.
Everything else I posted I posted as questions.
You and your anti-law enforcement friends needs to stop making up stuff to attribute to my posts.
Rough handling is not beating. That is your and Biddlin’s creative accusatory license at work.
I don’t see a question in “I am willing to accept and even expect some rough handling… to make an impression on the suspect that he/she should never flee.”
That seems pretty suggestive to me.
Frankly
“If many of these young male suspects had responsible fathers at home, I would expect their beating at home for what they have done to be much more severe than what they get from the cops.”
So in view of this video tape, can I assume that you view a responsible father repeatedly punching a child in the head and repeatedly kicking them as appropriate punishment ?
In my view, no responsible parent ( father or mother) would ever “beat” a child. The fact that you seem to think that a physical beating is an appropriate response to “misbehavior” is, in my opinion, advocacy of child abuse. Not only is it morally wrong, but it is also counterproductive in that all it teaches the child is to better hide their actions in order to avoid a beating, or that beating someone else is justified if you are bigger and believe strongly enough in the “rightness” of your position. Hardly great examples of how to deal with conflict in the real world.
One question that you have not asked, is how many violent criminals have been the victims of child abuse or witnesses to spousal abuse during their own childhoods and thus view violence to achieve one’s goals as part of the “natural order” ?
“anyone that flees the cops is automatically guilty of a crime,”
Not until a jury publishes its verdict.
“the cops have to give chase, I am willing to accept and even expect some rough handling by the cops for one – to make sure the suspect is not just resting to gather energy to flee again… and two – to make an impression on the suspect that he/she should never flee.” That’s called battery under color of authority.
California pc sec. 149:
“Every public officer who, under color of authority, without lawful necessity, assaults or beats any person, is punishable by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170, or by both that fine and imprisonment.”
Wish it was vigorously enforced…..
“If many of these young male suspects had responsible fathers at home, I would expect their beating at home for what they have done to be much more severe than what they get from the cops. And in fact, knowing about the beating they would get a home would be severe, they would probably not participate in the actions that caused the cops to suspect and detain them. And in consideration of this, are the cops just being fatherly here? Maybe these are “scared straight” beatings being delivered from a subconscious place of fatherly concern for these misbehaving boys.”
That speaks volumes about you and your ignorant, abusive theory of child rearing and human behavior modification. I wish I could say I’m surprised. I hope you neighbors are.
I’m pretty sure that evading an officer is usually a misdemeanor. It isn’t to be adjudicated on the spot by police officers (nobody is “automatically guilty” of anything). Penalties are usually fines or time in the county jail, not on-the-spot beatings by multiple officers.
Advising fathers to assault their grown sons seems imprudent to me. At some point the son will out-weigh and out-fight the father. If the son has been raised in a household that encourages that kind of violence it is likely that he will beat his own children as well. We break the cycle of child abuse by discouraging people from beating their children, not making excuses for it or outright encouraging it.
I had seen a few “bad cop” videos on TMZ ( my guilty pleasure.) before Patrick Feaster shot Andrew Thomas to death for trying to get out of a rolled over truck, last Thanksgiving, then taunted him and waited for nearly 15 minutes before telling his boss, “I might have shot him.” while Thomas lay mortally wounded in the cab of the vehicle. That was when I started paying attention to the videos, the data, the raw numbers on cop shootings in America and the incredibly lame excuses we allow the boys and girls in blue to get away with. If a cop in an American PD isn’t dirty, he knows some who are and remains silent. I know some departments that don’t already have the expertise to “doctor” their body cam footage are hiring people to do it for them.
If you know departments are altering videos why would you not hang them out to dry right now on this page?
They all do it.
In other words he doesn’t know.
A review of your past postings is evidence that deep research and thoughtful analysis are not your forte, but get some Chapstick and migraine strength Tylenol and do a little research. I know the L.A.P.D. policy states that, “Unauthorized use or release of footage and copying, erasing, or modifying recordings is serious misconduct subject to disciplinary actions.” But when dozens of officers are found to have sabotaged voice recording equipment, the police department opts against pursuing any disciplinary action. Same in Chicago, where 80 percent of Chicago PD dashboard cameras were lacking audio, a problem police officials blamed on “officer error” and “intentional destruction.”
When University of Maryland student John McKenna was beaten by police after a basketball game, the surveillance camera that should have been pointing at the area where the incident occurred had been turned off. Fortunately, the confrontation was captured by numerous students on their cellphones. The officer in charge of the cameras just happened to be married to one of the officers later disciplined for McKenna’s beating.
A TV reporter and her cameraman filed a lawsuit alleging they were assaulted by several police officers in Prince George’s County. During discovery, the county claimed that all seven dash-cams at the scene of the incident had coincidentally malfunctioned.
An appeals court judge in Texas noted that curiously, in a high percentage of cases in which a DWI suspect had challenged the charges, dash-cam footage of the traffic stop had gone missing.
I could fill the page with examples.
This willful destruction of evidence is SOP for cops. The assertion that these incidents are honest mistakes simply defies credulity. They are deliberate attempts to destroy evidence, like the countless incidents in which police have destroyed cellphone footage of arrests, beatings and other confrontations later resulting in allegations of abuse. But when evidence goes missing in a criminal case, the defense must prove ill intent on the part of police or prosecutors. That’s a nearly impossible standard.
Body cams may reduce assaults on police officers, use-of-force incidents and the number of complaints filed against police, but they are a transparency tool that can be turned on and off, tampered with or rendered useless with no consequences for the police officer doing the tampering. It does little to protect the public from officers prone to abuse and may be turned into another club for the cops to beat us up with.
Video footage can be edited and exploited by cop-haters and the liberal media and DNC… and the people in neighborhoods that tend to lie, cheat murder and steal and then lie again will feed off the images that feed their victim status and ignore that which supports the police actions.
We will just get more false “hands up don’t shoot” lies even lacking video to prove it.
People plagued with victim mentality and cop hatred will only believe what they want to believe despite the video evidence.
[moderator] post edited. See moderator note below.
The problem that you have is that video only covers one portion of the encounter.
[moderator] Post edited. See moderator note below.
It might just be a manifestation of {the] liberal tendency to process through their myopic moral filters of fairness and harm while ignoring those other moral filters of liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. For example they ignore lawless behavior of thugs over the bad behavior of cops dealing with thugs because the cops are powerful and the thugs are victims. Their moral filters just don’t accept the need for authority and sanctity of law… again, unless it supports their moral filters of fairness and harm.
A conservative like you and me will look at a broader moral landscape and consider, for example, that too many lawless thugs erode societal freedoms… freedom for safe travel… freedom from having property stolen… etc. We also have a problem with law-breakers in general through the moral filter of sanctity. But liberals obviously don’t really care about the law except those that are a means to their end of feeling better. They are all wee weed up about civil disobedience. That is why they would persecute Trump for using hurtful words, and then justify lawless thugs disrupting his campaign events and starting fights. It is all justified in the name of fairness and harm.
The problem with liberals with respect to law enforcement is that because they cannot see the big picture, they would constantly teeter-tooter between their demands resulting in their unintended consequences of just a different type of unfairness and harm. They don’t measure anything from a perspective of reasonable. It it is all the next marginal problem that becomes their crisis and call for action. For example, we could have only one bad cop encounter in the country every year, and they would make that a media and political crusade that IT NEEDS TO STOP!
Frankly, well stated and I completely agree.
Not sure about the title. “A video every juror must see” Why? To distrust the police??? If you watch the links all of the officers were either fired or resigned. Isn’t that what people want
The title I think relates to the fact that jurors accept certain things as a given: the word of police officers and authenticity of the video. Last summer when now Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel rolled out the first iteration of the Davis Body Camera program, he showed how things like perspective and context of videos matter. The other issue here is that police are covering for use of force by shouting things like “stop resisting” even when there is no sign of resistance on video. The point is that jurors should accept such things with a grain of salt – often they do, sometimes they don’t.
ginarose
“ “A video every juror must see” Why?”
For me the most important reason for viewing videos such as this is to understand differences of perspective and point of view. Both videos show aspects of what was happening but neither provides a full or complete accounting.
An interesting and relevant ongoing story that hinges on perspective, individual interpretation of information, and who citizens are conditioned to believe is the case in which the defendant is accused of threatening a witness. This accusation hinges on the interpretation of a gesture by a police officer ( hardly a neutral party), and a snippet of courtroom videotape which seem to be ambiguous as well as statements of other observers who are declining to testify.
What these tapes illustrate to me is that the saying we generally accept as common sense “a picture is worth a thousand words” does not mean that the picture, taken from a limited perspective, can be accepted as the full truth of a situation any more than can those “thousand words” even when the picture has not been altered.
Should anybody be interested in knowing how appellate courts have ruled on the matter of how much force an arresting officer can use to effect and retain custody, the seemingly simple and clear standard is this: An arresting officer can use only the minimum amount of force to make an arrest and cause the suspect to cease resisting.
Now of course, an officer could shoot the suspect multiple times and that would cease resistance for sure. But that’s where the “minimum” comes in. A judicial review of the officer’s actions would include what options the officer had at his/her disposal to make the suspect cease resistance or prevent escape. There is some degree of subjectivity in the after-the-fact judgment whether the officer should have used a baton, chemical spray, taser, firearm, or not.
Hypothetically, a diminutive female officer arresting a belligerent male prize fighter who is 6’5″ and 240 pounds would have the legal justification to escalate to lethal force more quickly than a male counterpart who is comparable in size and fighting ability to the suspect. Female police officers have their own legally unrecognized standard for custody, “Break a nail, go to jail”
The law specifically says arresting officers are never required to abandon an arrest effort, they may persist until its conclusion, successful or otherwise. However, law enforcement officers may elect to disengage an attempt to make an arrest if personal or public safety is a factor and the identity of the suspect is known or attainable. An arrest warrant is obtained and then the suspect is invariably taken into custody sometime later.
The so-called “street justice” scenarios described by other posters does happen. Police officers are human. But it’s illegal all the same under the minimum force standard described above. Law enforcement officers are expected to subordinate personal passion and vengeance and instead trust the courts to render justice.
There are many urban-legend level stories in the police culture where a resisting suspect gives as good as he gets, and causes injury to one or more officers. Then when fully fatigued and incapacitated the suspect announces he is giving up. The pithy retort is, “Not yet!” For what it’s worth, in the innumerable forcible arrest circumstances I’ve effected and witnessed, I never saw an incapacitated suspect given extra punishment in California. I did see it as a matter of form in my home state (circa 1963).
” Female police officers have their own legally unrecognized standard for custody, ‘Break a nail, go to jail'”
I’m sure all you “Gals” will find this one a knee slapper,eh?
(BTW, Whatever became of Arpaio’s Angel, Deborah Moyer, who assaulted her husband? Is she still a Maricopa county deputy? Probably.)
95% of cops are good and perform meeting lawful-society’s expectation for law enforcement.
95% of suspects are bad and perform meeting lawless-society’s expectation for lawlessness.
But social justice crusaders, the liberal media and the Democrat political machine ignore these facts and exploit the remaining 5%.
I don’t think either of those facts have been established. It’s hard to get data for one thing. But if you look at a department like San Francisco PD, the number of problem cops is way higher than 5%. And then you get the added problem of the lack of credible witnesses to bad behavior and the lack of willingness of cops to come forward (which is why I think the number of bad actors is far higher – those who perpetrate and those who look the other way).
In terms of suspects, you’re already cooking the books by going to suspect rather than contact. But even if we look at those arrested, most plead out for various reasons. So does that mean they are guilty? Hard to know for sure. There is evidence of people who plead to avoid exposure to worst charges and some of them have ended up exonerated.
But even if the number is only 5%, if you are talking about 5% of the 2 million in custody, that’s 100,000 people. If you’re talking about five percent of law enforcement, that estimate is 765,000 sworn law enforcement, 5% of that is 35,000 bad cops. That’s a huge number. That probably is a low number too.
There is a principle in business process engineering and software development that resolving the last 10% of defects will eat up 90% of the costs.
This has led to several best-practice improvement frameworks (TQM, RAD, JAD, XP, AGILE, BPI, SIX-SIGMA, Etc…) that all attempt to prevent defects up-front… because otherwise the costs are too high and are not feasible.
But even still, there will be defects.
Perfection is the enemy of the good.
The first thing we need to do is to decide what level of defects are acceptable (again, because we cannot afford to pursue perfection… and it isn’t attainable).
The next thing we need to do is to design and implement the improvement framework.
I can see one key improvement we should make asap. That is make public sector unions illegal. That way it would be much easier for municipal management to get rid of bad cops.
The other key thing we need to do is to de-politicize law enforcement criticism. Because it has become a DNC platform item and it is preventing any collaborative support.
Perfection is not what is being sought here. That’s a redherring. You are downplaying the incidence of misconduct using fictitious statistics.
For the statistics to be real, you would need to count all the cop encounters and then count the ones considered “bad” and then trend those two lines to see if things are actually getting worse, or better or staying the same.
Otherwise you cannot make the case that I am downplaying anything. It might be that you are inflating everything.
[moderator] Post edited. See moderator note below.
[moderator] I want all of you who are arguing directly with each other to stop doing that. Period. Discuss the issues only, and stay on topic.
I will pull any more posts that are direct attacks on any other Vanguard participant.
I will pull any more posts that are broadly derogatory.
I need you all to read and follow the Vanguard Comment policy.
Here is an interesting report from the DOJ:
Here is a telling bit…
Which again gets back to the point that the delta here is that blacks, and Hispanics, especially young male blacks and Hispanics, are more often suspects in criminal activity. And this is in fact justified given the crime statistics (for example, Asians are not often suspects and Asians as a demographic have low crime participation stats.)
When controlled for a lack of suspicion (e.g., traffic encounters) all races claim to be treated fairly at the same level.
Again, it points to the root of the problem being racial-representation in crime, not the cops being racist.
“An estimated 9 out of 10 residents who had contact with police in 2008 felt the police acted properly.”
Which sounds good, but it’s lower than your 95% number. 10% of all police interactions were deemed to be improper. But of course, the complaint isn’t about all people but some people, and the number of 31% and 37.7% for blacks and Hispanics show you where the problem lies.
It says that 90% “felt” that the police acted properly. I think it is entirely reasonable to carve out half of those remaining 10% that don’t have a clue what proper police behavior is and needs to be, or else are just unreasonable people that would complain about any cop interactions justified or not.
Tell me why again that the situation with law enforcement is a crisis in this political season when the use of force has declined over the last decade.
Let me help you. It is political.
I don’t buy the its political line. First of all this issue really started in August 2014 so that was two years before the election. Second most of the activists are not really heavily political. I don’t buy it’s political line. If you look at the campaigns, neither Bernie nor Hillary have really tapped into black lives matter. So again I just don’t see that connection.
2008 was not 2015, when US cops killed 1205 people. Some people have heard the lies and seen the cover-ups too often for the same old propaganda to fly. Don’t trust the body cams. When you see police engaged with citizens, record it yourself.
If you record them acting inappropriately, before surrendering media cards or thumb drives to the police oversight agency(never give them to the police) make copies and publish on the internet. Many,if not most cops will try to tell you it is illegal to record them. If they are in a public setting, like on the street, or in a shopping mall, they have no expectation of privacy and as long as you don’t physically interfere with their action, you may record to your heart’s content. Some cops will try to steal your camera and memory devices(A common occurrence in San Jose, I understand). Some cops will react violently to being recorded, so be careful.