What Went Wrong — A Police Video Deconstructed

What's striking about all the controversial police videos we've covered is how different they can look to people, depending on their backgrounds. If you're a police officer, certain things might stand out, while if you're a civilian or you've been arrested by a police officer, other things might catch your attention.

So we thought we'd try something new, using a video brought to our attention by member station WFDD in the Triad region of North Carolina. The recordings come from the body cameras of two officers as they make a routine call — which then goes bad.

We asked several people to watch the video, each one separately, and then added their observations as "pop-up" quotes in the video. All three concluded that the incident was mishandled by police, but they have different takes on exactly what went wrong — and why.

To view the annotations, the video must be watched on a desktop computer, preferably at full screen.

Greensboro Police Department/NPR via YouTube

Commenters

Daunasia Yancey: Black Lives Matter activist (Yellow)

Peter Moskos: former Baltimore police officer, now an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (Red)

Jim Glennon: former police officer in Illinois, now owns Calibre Press, a company that trains police around the country (Blue)

Martin Kaste: NPR's law enforcement correspondent (Green)

Thanks to Emily McCord at WFDD, and for the reporting help of Edward Garcia