Yesterday, we showed you a shocking video showing Oakland Police firing on videographer Scott Campbell as he filmed a police line during the Occupy Wall Street General Strike in Oakland. There was no provocation, no threat. He had even asked permission to be where he was.

The San Jose Mercury news has been all over this story, and the reaction they’ve gotten has been unequivocal – this is a blatant violation of police procedure, civil rights, and the norms of society.

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminal justice professor who’s an expert in police decision-making and use of force, said the video left him “astonished, amazed and embarrassed… that’s one of the most outrageous uses of a firearm that I’ve ever seen. Unless there’s a threat that you can’t see in the video, that just looks like absolute punishment, which is the worst type of excessive force.”

Sam Walker, a professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who consulted with Oakland police on the federal consent decree emerging from the Riders scandal: “It looks terrible. It certainly looks like they singled him out to be shot … and there does not appear to have been any sort of attack by the protester. Clearly, the camera is not approaching the officers, so they couldn’t claim that he posed a threat.”

Paul Chevigny, professor emeritus at the New York University School of Law, said it looks like “a violation of his First Amendment rights apart from being a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. He has a right to take a film of what the police do — we’ve been over this thousands of times — unless he’s interfering in some way… I can’t imagine what they’re going to say about shooting this guy. Sounds like the Oakland police need a little brush-up on their training.”

The Mercury News noted that Oakland police and City Hall representatives didn’t return emails seeking comment Monday. Oakland Police have said there will be an internal investigation into a a previous incident from the week before, in which Iraq war vet Scott Olson had his skull fractured by Oakland Police in what also looked like an unprovoked attack against a protester who was making no threatening moves against the police. But Campbell says he won’t be satisfied with an internal police review – he wants an independent investigation, and is considering legal action. “I’ve been discussing it with some individuals from the National Lawyers Guild. So far nothing’s been decided,” Campbell said. “It’s shocking that someone who is a police officer felt it was appropriate to do that. I’m not sure what the options are, but I would like to have the officer identified, and I would like for him to be held accountable.” See our previous report, with the video: Unprovoked shooting by Oakland cops caught on video

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