In
Video Age, A Rush to Judgment?
Cellphone videos of a police killing in Oakland,
Calif., spark outrage.
By Ben Arnoldy | Staff writer of The Christian Science
Monitor
January 13, 2009 edition
Oakland, Calif. - If a picture is worth a thousand words, the videos of
a uniformed police officer shooting an unarmed man lying on his belly
are worth, in the eyes of many Oakland residents, at least three: Arrest
the cop.
The police killing of Oscar Grant III has drawn national attention and
already sparked a riot last week in downtown Oakland. The young black
man was in a group pulled off a train here early on New Year's Day by
transit police responding to reports of rowdy passengers.
Public hearings this past weekend revealed escalating anger with
officials overseeing the investigations into the incident. The district
attorney has projected that charges, if any, could take another 10 days.
Community leaders say that pace is unacceptable given the "conclusive"
footage.
But in a time when cellphone video is demanding greater police
accountability, sometimes eyewitness video can also make the story more
complex.
A new study calls into question the entire notion of a "conclusive
video." Researchers interviewed hundreds of people about a tape that
eight Supreme Court justices deemed so incontrovertible that it formed
the basis of a summary judgment. It turned out, however, that many
people interpreted the footage quite differently.
"If there's one lesson in this [study], it should be that we don't make
the mistake of thinking that the tape speaks for itself," says Dan Kahan,
a Yale law professor and lead author of the study to be published in the
forthcoming Harvard Law Review.
"You've got to have all the evidence in the case. What people were
thinking, what people heard, what's going on outside the camera frame,"
he says.
The research jumped off the Scott v. Harris decision of 2007, a case
that revolved around the use of deadly force by police during a car
chase. Video from inside a cruiser proved so compelling for eight of the
nine justices that they took the unprecedented step of uploading it to
the court's website to allow the tape "to speak for itself."
Mr. Kahan and his colleagues decided to ask a diverse sample of 1,350
people across the country whether the video spoke to them in similar
ways. Roughly 75 percent of those interviewed said that deadly force was
warranted – as the court majority verdict did – with the remaining
quarter disagreeing. The divide mapped along recognizable social
divisions such as race, ideology, and religion.
"People who have different ideas about how society works interpret what
look like plain old facts differently," says Kahan.
Watching a video, he says, requires interpreting what happened before
the camera started rolling, what's happening outside the frame, and
what's going on in the minds of the people shown.
Police action in a video age
Interpretations notwithstanding, the increasing ubiquity of cellphone
video has ensured greater police accountability.
Last July, for instance, in an incident between a rookie New York City
cop and a cyclist, the officer claimed that the cyclist deliberately
steered into him. Video of the incident, however, indicated the opposite
to be true – resulting in the officer being charged with assault and
harassment.
Still, police often act oblivious to the cameras and their superiors
have been slow to recognize the public relations urgency they create.
Most attending the public hearings and street demonstrations in Oakland
feel the videos in the Grant case show his killing to be unjustified.
"Two of the four videos are conclusive as far as what took place," says
local pastor Dion Evans.
The videos show Mr. Grant prone on the station platform being restrained
by two white officers. Pastor Evans says Grant appears to be "squirming"
because he's on someone else's legs. He describes how Officer Johannes
Mehserle stands up, grabs his gun, "points in a way [Mehserle] can see
the weapon," and then shoots.
However, others see the squirming as resisting arrest, and see in Mr.
Mehserle's face a look of surprise after the gun fires – prompting
speculation of an accidental discharge or taser mix-up. "I don't see
anything in this video that's condemning enough to warrant charging this
officer until an investigation has been completed," says Tom Aveni, an
expert on questionable police shootings with the Police Policy Studies
Council.
Mehserle resigned to avoid making a statement.
Mr. Aveni says he's hesitant to draw much from the videos because he
can't make out where Grant's hands are. "That's a focal issue as to
whether or not the officer thought the suspect was trying to access a
weapon."
For George Holland, head of the Oakland chapter of the NAACP, the videos
are "overwhelming compelling evidence." They leave less up for
interpretation than the video of police beating Rodney King in 1991, he
says, because they are augmented by audio and many independent
witnesses.
"When there's a cop involved, [investigators] always go slow, we know
that. But this is so outrageous ... the evidence is so overwhelming,"
says Mr. Holland.
Bay Area Rapid Transit police chief Gary Gee says the investigation is
wrapping up. "We are going to finish this thing as quickly as we can,"
he says, adding, "The videos are one piece of evidence and you can't
draw a conclusion on it alone."
Concern over delays
There are many reasons why the community here wants a quicker
investigation and arrest. Delays tend to benefit the defendant, Holland
says. And "thugs and vandals," he adds, can exploit delays to stir up
trouble like last week's violence.
More than 100 rioters smashed storefront windows and parked cars last
Wednesday night, after an evening of peaceful protest. "What happened to
the guy that got shot is clearly wrong, but I just don't agree with how
people are handling it" with violence, said Oakland resident Mike
Sikoyak.
But he also expressed a common refrain: "If it was any of us that had
shot anybody else, we would have been arrested and locked up."