I had watched the video again, right before our interview. Freddie Gray’s agonizing cries for help as he is being carried to the police van, his legs dragging on the ground, are haunting. The prosecution had argued that the audio was irrelevant to the case.

“Seeing it now, it’s surreal. I don’t believe it sometimes.” Kevin Moore paused for a long time, then added “I can’t get past the screams. It’s the first thing you hear in the video, Freddie screaming. When they showed the video in court they played it on mute.”

“We have heard everything from devices being illegally searched and confiscated, to bystanders being falsely accused of assaulting officers or interfering with an investigation,” Jackie Zammuto, US program manager of the organization, told me on the phone.

WITNESS, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that supports activists who document human rights abuses, has analyzed numerous instances of police retaliation against the people who filmed or shared these videos.

While their videos have sparked protests and community action, people behind other high-profile videos of police killings of Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, and Alton Sterling have also alleged retaliation from police for filming them. Like Moore, each of them told me stories of false arrests , intimidation , physical violence , doxxing , and illegal confiscation of their phones after filming or sharing videos of police misconduct.

“Those cops used to hang out outside my job, at my kid’s school, in front of the house, they’d hold their phone cameras up when I’d pass by,” he explained.

The violent arrest of Freddie Gray on April 12th, 2015 was caught on camera by several people, but it was Gray’s friend Moore who filmed the video that would later be shown by media outlets and in court. What Moore didn’t know then was that this was just the beginning of his encounters with Baltimore police. What followed was months of police harassment, intimidation, doxing, and a false arrest after filming the Freddie Gray video.

Moore, on the other hand, went directly to Baltimore Police Internal Affairs to turn his video over, offering his testimony and cooperation. When Gray died a week later from injuries sustained in the police van, city-wide protests broke out in support of Gray and his family. As he was leaving one of the protests, and just days after speaking out about police harassment and intimidation , Moore was detained at gunpoint, without charges. Two members of Copwatch, an organization which observes and documents police misconduct, were also detained. Though he was released the same night without charges, Moore says he has since been repeatedly harassed by police.

During one of several stops the police van made after the arrest, a second neighbor filmed the officers placing leg shackles on Gray’s limp body. When commanding officer William G. Porter arrived at the scene, the neighbor called out to him “Hey Porter! That’s not cool, you’ve got to get him an ambulance.” Officer Porter walked toward the neighbor and took out his stun gun, threatening to use it if he didn't leave. Surveillance video confirms the account of the neighbor, who refused to give his name in an interview with the Baltimore Sun , fearing police retaliation.

Then there are the more extreme cases of Moore and Ramsey Orta, who filmed the fatal police encounters with Eric Garner. “[They] have been repeatedly targeted and harassed by law enforcement because of the videos they filmed,” said Zammuto.

“You have to understand, where I come from, you don’t go to police” he explained. “I feel like they did that shit to make me look like a rat, to make people say, like ‘Hey, is this guy telling?,’” Moore said. “And if something happened to me, they wouldn’t be held responsible for it directly.”

Moore said that the Baltimore police harassed him by releasing a surveillance photo of him on local TV and social media, asking for help in identifying him as a witness. The photo came out on April 24th, 11 days after Moore had spoken to internal investigators and gave a statement on video.

T.J. Smith, a Baltimore Police Department's chief spokesperson, explained in an email that “there didn’t seem to be a focus on Mr. Moore specifically,” but couldn’t comment further.

Moore met Orta, the man who filmed the Eric Garner video, through Copwatch two years ago, and the two have since become close friends. “Ramsey is like the brother I always wanted,” Moore said.

Orta is currently serving a four-year sentence on weapons and drug charges that both he and Moore say are retaliatory.

“Ramsey has been arrested dozens of times since the video. I went to every one of his court dates,” Moore added. “Cases like that, man, they railroaded him and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Orta’s cellphone video of Eric Garner’s last moments on July 17th, 2014—which depicts an officer pinning Garner to the ground in a chokehold, asphyxiating him—has now been shared and viewed millions of times. Both he and Taisha Allen, the second bystander who filmed the incident, claim to have been subjected to harassment, physical intimidation, and unlawful arrest since filming the video.

"Video isn’t going to make us safer, but it will tell our story. If it made us safer you wouldn’t see Eric Garner getting choked to death, you wouldn’t see Walter Scott getting shot down like a dog. But it finally tells the truth of what really happened"

Orta told Motherboard that the night of Garner’s killing, he was woken up by officers shining a flashlight into his bedroom and around his Staten Island home. He said that during one of his arrests, an officer pointed a phone at him and said “You filmed us, so now we’re filming you.” When asked for comment on allegations of retaliation against Orta and Allen via email, NYPD’s Office of the Deputy Commissioner responded “they were arrested based on probable cause and not because they filmed the Eric Garner arrest.” The NYPD did not respond to specific questions about Orta and Allen’s allegations.