A reader writes:
I take issue with the view that the Garner case is a rebuttal of the argument for body cams. Isn’t it compelling that we have this video to show us all what really happened? The public can now make up its own mind what it means. We don’t have to rely on eyewitnesses who are historically unreliable. From the scene with Garner, we would probably have at least six different descriptions from civilians of how he was taken down and two or three different ones from cops. But we don’t need that; we have the video.
Just because the grand jury returned no indictment doesn’t mean the video was a failure. Without the video, can’t you imagine that there would be plenty of pundits calling Garner a thug, emphasizing that he resisted arrest? But there is only a smattering of that. Instead we get things like Bill O’Reilly saying that Garner “didn’t deserve that.”
Another adds:
Three or four more videos like the Garner video? I guarantee we will get some legislation passed.
Another runs through other reasons why cameras would be a net benefit:
First, the most important goal of body-cam reforms is not to provide evidence of police abuse after it happens. It is to change the culture of policing so that the police, knowing they will be held accountable for their actions, will not commit the abuse in the first place. It also changes the behavior of the citizens being policed, making things less likely to escalate all around.
This is not a fantasy. These positive effects have been observed in reality in places where body-cam reforms have been implemented. For example, the Rialto, CA police
department found a 50% reduction in use-of-force incidents and a 90% reduction in citizen complaints after implementing body cameras. Those are astounding results.
In Garner’s case, I’m sure you noticed how hostile the police were to the man with the camera. They did not want to be videotaped. They did not think they should be videotaped. I think it is entirely probable that officer Pantaleo would have acted differently if the camera in question had been on his lapel, rather than in the hands of a bystander being aggressively shooed away by the cops. People act differently not just when they know they’re being recorded, but when they know that they are supposed to be recorded. It changes the culture.
Second, imagine that we had no video of this incident – not even from the bystander. Is there any doubt that it would now be just as murky a case as Ferguson? There would not have been nearly as much public outcry, and what objections there were would have been waived away by people taking the police’s word as gospel and sliming Garner as a violent thug who made the cops fear for their lives. Just compare the video of Tamir Rice’s killing to the police’s account of the incident before they knew there was video if you doubt that cops will lie their asses off in the absence of a video.
Video evidence can only be a good thing in these cases. The widespread consensus that Garner’s killing was wrong would not exist without this video. In all likelihood, neither you nor I would have even heard about the incident. It would have been just another of these everyday injustices that go unnoticed and unpunished every day.
More on the Rialto example here. One more reader:
Perhaps you can remember another recent incident in which there was a horrific attack but a perpetrator got off virtually scot free. People attacked the system, people defended the system, but in the end nothing changed. The there’s a video, and there’s talk of a coverup, of the grave injustice, of the callousness of a system that would fail to punish the person who did such an obvious thing.
I’m talking of of Ray Rice. It was patently obvious that Rice was guilty of assault. You don’t need to see a video to know that his fiancee was knocked unconscious – it was part of the story. But apparently if you’re Roger Goodell (or other defenders of the slap on the write), that’s more or less ok until the public sees the tape.
This is precisely the problem that I have with some folks on the right now suddenly discovering that the police are capable of extraneous violence. The facts are so clear, so obvious, yet since there’s not a video, “I stand with law enforcement”. All you have to do is – and I don’t think I’m exaggerating here – talk to a person of color in any minority neighborhood in literally anywhere USA to hear stories just like Eric Garner’s, minus the asthma and videotape. They could look at the claims of police brutality, instead of waving it away with claims of “race baiting”. But if there’s video, somehow now they’re the great defenders of the public from an out-of-control police force.
Update from a reader with a gloomy cynical take:
Busy afternoon, but a brief response to your reader who wrote: “Three or four more videos like the Garner video? I guarantee we will get some legislation passed.” Sadly, I disagree. The point of the Albert Burneko piece you excerpted yesterday, as well as many contributions by Ta-Nehisi Coates, is that the system that failed to bring the Garner case to trial is not broken, but working exactly as designed. The system was designed by politicians to do exactly what it is doing, and the politicians were elected by the people, who intended that they design precisely this system.
Fox News is covering this matter in a way you describe as “the baldest racism I’ve seen in awhile on cable news.” They are doing so because they are the cable news network of the people who elected the people who designed the system that failed to achieve an indictment in Staten Island. I believe that we will see polling, probably early next week, that indicates a division of public opinion in the Garner case, and that this division will fall more or less along the same racial lines as the polling on the Ferguson matter.
I believe the existence of a videotape presenting exactly what happened will make little difference here, as I believe the exact circumstances in any given case make little difference to the holders of these opinions. The video in question may have stiffened the spine of a few folks like Charles Krauthammer and Andrew McCarthy, but Fox News knows its audience. They don’t need a videotape to decide what happened when a hero met a thug in the hellscape of urban NYC.
We don’t need more videotapes. Conor posted plenty in his excellent summation. Later the same day as that post, the Tamir Rice video was released. Here’s the one from the John Crawford Wal-Mart shooting in August in Ohio that Connor missed. This video did not persuade the grand jury in that case to order up any indictments either. This isn’t a matter of three or four more tapes. Everyone knows what’s on the damn tapes.
This too shall pass. We will move onto something else, so much more quickly than seems possible. Like Sandy Hook, we will scream and we will rend and we will finally change the subject, having achieved nothing. The politicians want nothing achieved, because the voters want nothing achieved. And the beat, as you say, will go on.
(Photo of a police cam from Getty Images)
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