Recording police is often only available record on abuses

From the Oakland Tribune May 3, 2015 by Thomas Peele

After I wrote in December about the woeful state of access to police personnel records in California, a letter soon arrived. A reader interpreted my calling for transparency of law enforcement disciplinary records as meaning I wanted information that could hurt cops’ families to be made public.

I lack “respect of authority” and want to enable “loonies on the left” to attack police, the person wrote. I’m an “a—hole,” the writer concluded. At least they got that part right, although I’ve been called far worse.

The response to police violence and brutality against African-American men since the shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, last year reached an epic level with the rioting in Baltimore last week following the in-custody injuries of Freddie Gray that took his life. The public’s paying attention. The president and former attorney general have spoken out.

Random incidents around the country, from a reserve deputy in Oklahoma shooting a handcuffed man in the back, killing him, to an Arizona cop running down a man from behind with his car, are suddenly, and finally, big news. They wouldn’t be if police controlled the narratives, and in some states, like California, the records.

The killing of Eric Harris on April 2 by 73-year-old Robert Bates, a volunteer sheriff’s deputy in Oklahoma, who bought a cop uniform and badge with gifts and campaign donations, was captured on another officer’s body camera. Bates, who’s pleaded not guilty to manslaughter, claims he thought his Taser was in his hand, not his gun, when he shot Harris in the back.

Harris had just been filmed selling a weapon to undercover cops. What would we know of his death if that recording wasn’t made public? Chances are very little. The Tulsa County Sheriff even trotted out an expert who claimed Bates was a victim of stress caused by Harris’ attempt to escape and couldn’t be held accountable for his actions. Other police experts rejected that claim.

If the shooting had occurred in California, there’s almost no chance the video would have been released. We have the most opaque police personnel laws in the nation, a total shutdown of access. The way to the truth isn’t road-blocked, it’s cut off by a massive landslide.

How worried are law enforcement officials about the release of body camera and dash-cam recordings? Last year, the CHP went to court in San Francisco and sought a blanket gag order on the release of dash-cam footage. It came after a routine DWI arrest was captured on video. The public defender’s office objected.

When the Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, whose freedom of information committee I co-chair, filed an amicus brief supporting the public defender, state Attorney General Kamala Harris filed one of her own supporting the CHP. The CHP claimed the recording was part of the arresting officer’s personnel file. It won, and access to dash-cam images through court files are off limits.

Given the state of the law, there’s no hope in acquiring such footage under the Public Records Act.

That means the best chance here of learning about police abuse is for it to be captured live, just as hero citizen Feidin Santana did when he recorded Walter Scott being shot in the back as he ran from North Charleston, South Carolina, cop Michael Slager. Imagine what we’d know of that shooting if not for Santana.

If you saw that video, you saw Slager, now charged with murder, picking up his Taser, walking about 30 feet to Scott’s body and tossing it to the ground as nonchalantly as a piece of trash. It’s obvious Slager was setting up his lie that Scott was grabbing for the Taser when Slager fired.

Then there’s CHP Officer Daniel Andrew filmed by a passing motorist as he savagely beat a homeless, mentally ill Los Angeles woman, Mardella Pinnock, on a highway last year. Don’t think for a moment that Pinnock gets $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit and that Andrew resigns if not for that recording.

Courts have ruled repeatedly that there is an absolute First Amendment right to film on-duty police. As long as we are blocked in California and elsewhere from access to records about police abuse, it’s often the best source of what really happens out there that’s available.

Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for this newspaper and teaches a class on public records at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Follow him at Twitter.com/thomas_peele.