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Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that in the past year, after the killings of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, many police departments and police reformists have agreed on the necessity of police-worn body cameras. But the most powerful cameras aren’t those on officer’s bodies but those wielded by bystanders. We don’t yet know who shot videos of officer officer, Michael T. Slager, shooting Walter Scott eight times as he runs away but "unknown cameramen and women lived out high democratic ideals: They watched a cop kill someone, shoot recklessly at someone running away, and they kept the camera trained on the cop," writes Robinson. "They were there, on an ordinary, hazy Saturday morning, and they chose to be courageous. They bore witness, at unknown risk to themselves."
“We have been talking about police brutality for years. And now, because of videos, we are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is,” tweeted Deray McKesson, an activist in Ferguson, after the videos emerged Tuesday night. “The videos over the past seven months have empowered us to ask deeper questions, to push more forcefully in confronting the system.” The process of ascertaining the truth of the world has to start somewhere. A video is one more assertion made about what is real concludes Robinson. "Today, through some unknown hero’s stubborn internal choice to witness instead of flee, to press record and to watch something terrible unfold, we have one more such assertion of reality."
Update: NBC News has identified the cameraman as Feidin Santana.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @12:56AM
Nonsense. Not all abuses result in people being severely injured or killed. The abuses less talked about are drug enforcement, stop-and-frisk (which is less talked about on the individual level), and warrantless surveillance. There is also the fact that while the thugs who commit the most heinous acts might be small in number, most of their fellow thugs in blue will step up to defend them, making them almost as bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @05:57PM
No matter how you look at it, the "blue wall" is a criminal conspiracy. The entire justice system should be taken down under the RICO Act and rebuilt from the ground-up.