Albany

A handful of video recordings of the alleged racial assault on three black University at Albany students last weekend do not clearly show the women being attacked on a bus by a large group including white men, two community leaders who saw the recordings said Friday.

The videos also contain no audible racial slurs — though the audio quality is often "bad" and sometimes nonexistent, said Common Council President Carolyn McLaughlin and Alice Green, a longtime social justice activist in the city.

But Green and McLaughlin, both leaders in the city's African- American community, stopped short of questioning the women's account of the alleged Jan. 30 assault and cautioned that the recordings — at least five in number — depict a chaotic scene on a packed bus, making it difficult for anyone who wasn't there to say with certainty what happened.

"Nothing is clear-cut at all," said Green, the executive director of the Center for Law & Justice. "People have claimed there was a racial incident. It's kind of hard to tell from the video. ... It's just very confusing."

Asked whether the videos call the women's claims into doubt, Green said: "I think that's the thing you're going to have to leave to other people who are investigating this and talking to them all, you know, because I can't venture to guess what actually happened."

District Attorney David Soares screened the recordings — including the most comprehensive view from the cameras on board the CDTA bus — for select community and university officials during a lengthy, closed-door meeting Friday "to urge calm" as the backlash from the incident has intensified against other passengers and the accusers themselves.

Authorities have not released the recordings to the public, but at least one cellphone video recorded by a passenger and obtained by the Times Union depicts a scrum at the back of the bus known to students as "the drunk bus."

Soares, who declined to comment on the content of the recordings, specifically pointed to the role social media have played in fueling on-campus tension, including threats directed at some students, in the days since the 1 a.m. fracas that erupted as the bus pulled onto campus.

"We believe what we were able to share with folks certainly helped to shape perspective," Soares said. "There is a social media component here that is moving at a much faster clip than the actual truth-seeking, fact-finding investigation, and ... people are arriving at conclusions that are based upon the words and hearsay of individuals. We can't engage in that."

Soares said the recordings, which include cellphone footage, have been turned over to State Police technicians, who are working to enhance them and create the most comprehensive account possible before decisions about whether to charge anyone are made.

He said they will not be made public while the investigation is ongoing and could not provide a timeline for its conclusion.

The assault allegations spread like a flash on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Yik Yak in the hours after the incident and have since gained national attention, including from Black Lives Matter leader activist DeRay McKesson and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who on Thursday tweeted a link to a story about the case with the message: "There is no excuse for racism and violence on a college campus."

On Wednesday, University President Robert Jones issued a video statement urging civility and patience on campus as the investigation plays out. The tone of the message was a marked departure from that in a statement he issued immediately after the allegations surfaced, saying he was "saddened and angry" and vowing that the university would respond "rapidly and forcefully."

Students and community members — including McLaughlin — rallied in support of the women on campus Monday night at an event organized by the local arm of the National Congress of Black Women, with some calling for the immediate expulsion of any students found to have been involved.

While Green and McLaughlin were guarded about drawing conclusions about what they saw in the recordings, they were explicit about what they did not see.

"I didn't see, for instance, any white male attack anybody," Green said, adding later: "They're trying to pull people apart. ... That's what it looked like to me."

In a social media post after the incident, one of the women, Asha Burwell, said she and her friends were called a racial slur and that "a bunch of guys starting hitting me and my two friends and punching us in the head."

Burwell also said she was held with her arms behind her back while her friends were assaulted and that their pleas for help went unheeded by other riders and the driver of the 90-foot-long tandem bus. No one was seriously injured in the incident. An attempt to reach Burwell was unsuccessful Friday.

"If that was said," McLaughlin said of the racial slurs, "we couldn't hear. But there are portions of the videos that we saw where there was no sound. ... A lot of action, but no sound."

Green and McLaughlin said that given how crowded the bus was, how the fracas even began is not clear.

"It's hard for anybody else to tell what happened on that bus because you can't hear any racial slurs or anything — or any kind of clear conversation," Green said, adding later: "One woman jumped up, but I don't even know why she jumped up. You can't tell."

A third community leader who has viewed the video but declined to speak publicly about it because of the sensitivity of the allegations told the Times Union that what he had seen did not support key elements of the women's account.

Soares said his office has not yet determined whether charges will be warranted and defended his decision to withhold the actual recordings until the inquiry is complete.

"In the course of an investigation we do not release anything that would allow for people to arrive at a variety of interpretations, none of which would be helpful to arriving at truth," he said.

jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com • 518-454-5445 • @JCEvangelist_TU