24 episodes of police abuse caught on camera

In the Digital Age, camera-armed citizens can draw national attention to encounters with local law enforcement.



Click through our slideshow to see 26 police videos that went viral. In the Digital Age, camera-armed citizens can draw national attention to encounters with local law enforcement.



Click through our slideshow to see 26 police videos that went viral. Image 1 of / 45 Caption Close 24 episodes of police abuse caught on camera 1 / 45 Back to Gallery

A popular saying among a certain demographic holds that an armed society is a polite society. But armed with what? For citizens of the Digital Age, a weapon of choice is emerging: the camera.

Amid worries of mounting militarization and aggression in police forces, Americans have taken aim with their smartphones to record law enforcement encounters, and the fruits of their efforts have lately made the nightly news. Last week, bystander-recorded footage of a South Carolina shooting proved an officer lied in testimony, and saw his arrest on a murder charge for firing eight fatal shots into a fleeing man's back.

It wasn't the first time footage of a police encounter sparked a national response, but the modern proliferation of digital cameras has made police videos a crucial part of news coverage.

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"The biggest impact of citizen photography is probably in public awareness," said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy and technology project. "The fact that the media is paying so much attention to cases that would have been ignored in times past."

Efforts to keep cameras fixed on law enforcement have been promoted by a variety of groups that educate citizens on their filming rights, encourage them to record and to post their videos online.

"We've learned over the years that police are not always telling the truth, that they have a tendency to create their own narrative," said Carlos Miller, founder of the blog Photography Is Not A Crime, "And we believe this effort will protect the citizens."

Miller, a former police reporter for newspapers across the Southwest, started PINAC in 2007 after being arrested and beaten for recording police arrests. Initially it took a lucky encounter to catch an arrest on tape, but that same year, Apple debuted the iPhone, and an army of freshly-armed citizen reporters began to stock Miller's website with home video of police abuse. Quickly, a new side of law enforcement became visible.

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"The people have become much more aware," Miller said. "When I covered police for newspapers, you could only depend on police narratives and press releases, and witnesses never had much credibility. Now the introduction of videos gives these cases a whole other dimension of truth."

Similarly, the New York City-based Cop Watch used to raise funds to buy cameras for a select few police monitors, said director José Martín. When a citizen caught valuable video, like the footage that led to charges against four officers for the beating of Rodney King in 1991, they had to shop around for a news network that would air it. No longer. YouTube has allowed internet users to dictate what is important to national media, simply by accumulating views and shares, Martín said. Cop Watch also hosts a database of videos.

But it's not just citizen reports that have brought instances of police abuse to the public eye. Departments nationwide have responded to growing scrutiny of their practices by mandating the use of body cameras on officers. Legislation to require such cameras on Texas state police is currently pending in the capitol.

A 2014 study sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice showed the use of body cameras was linked to a decrease in citizen complaints against officers and in the use of force by officers. It also found anecdotal evidence of a "civilizing effect."

"When the police are aware they're being videotaped, they're less likely to do something they wouldn't want posted to YouTube," Stanley said.

Still, body cameras have exposed to questionable law enforcement encounters, like the accidental fatal shooting of an unarmed man in Tulsa, Oklahoma on April 2. And a host of cameras of police vehicles, in private surveillance systems and on news helicopters have drawn attention to other violent encounters.

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However, police departments point out that officers make contact with citizens tens of millions of times per year, of which instances of abuse constitute a very small fraction.

But the video evidence proves that they exist.

"This is America. That's not how it should be in this country," Miller said. "They should respect the people then the people should respect them back."

Check out our slideshow to see recent times when police violence was caught on camera.