Video Never Tells the Whole Story
Video never tells the whole story. I learned this decades ago as a prosecutor in the Criminal Section, Civil Rights Division, United States Department of Justice. Yes, that’s the same unit that presumably will review the FBI investigation into the shooting death of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Video evidence of alleged police misconduct was relatively new in the late 1970s. The Criminal Section thought that it had strong case against a police officer accused of brutality when a video of the incident – occurring inside a police station, if I recall – supported the prosecution’s case. Yet, the trial resulted in an acquittal. This was not my case, but I learned that video evidence can be subject to reasonable doubt, based on issues such as the angle of a camera – and can be ignored or explained or overused. And the “whole story” as I use the term includes everything that led up to the incident, because a jury hears all of that and decides for itself how much is relevant to the issues they will decide.
Prosecutions of law enforcement officers for misconduct are difficult, because jurors often come into the courtroom with a pro-law enforcement bias. It’s very hard for many to believe that police officers act with the specific intent of depriving an individual of his or her constitutional rights, including the right not to be shot without justification. The existence of video evidence can help the prosecution because it can often disprove untrue police arguments in support of the conduct at issue. And yet such evidence goes only so far.
I have watched the multiple videos of the tragic ICE shooting in Minneapolis and do not opine one way or the other as to justification. Until just a few minutes ago, I thought that the investigative bodies of both the State of Minnesota and the federal government, and the lawyers supervising them, would decide what they thought they saw and would act accordingly. And I naively thought that this shooting and the others in which ICE has been involved might change the Trump Administration’s misguided and ultimately calamitous strategies. Now, sadly, I recognize there will be no reconsideration of the federal government’s approach.
The life of a mother of three has been lost. A family has been shattered. That’s all we need to think about for now.