A California law forced police to release shooting footage. Now videos follow the same script

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://calmatters.org/justice/2023/04/california-police-shooting-videos/

The video isn’t much different from hundreds of others produced since California passed a law in 2018 mandating police departments release body camera footage within 45 days of any incident when an officer fires a gun, or uses force that leads to great bodily injury or death. Like most other critical incident videos released by law enforcement agencies after a shooting, this one is a heavily edited version of the original raw video, created by one of the private contractors that went into business editing police footage after the law went into effect.

(snip)

The law has some exceptions, allowing departments to withhold video if it would endanger the investigation or put a witness at risk. Law enforcement departments often cite those reasons when regularly denying records requests by CalMatters and other news organizations. Of the 36 fatal police shooting cases since July 2021 being tracked by CalMatters, only three have responded with even partial records.

Instead, the public and the media must rely on edited presentations that often include a highlighted or circled object in a person’s hand, slowed-down video to show the moments when the person may have pointed the object at police and transcriptions of the body camera’s audio.

They are also the only documentation of a fatal police encounter that the public will see for months, or years, or maybe ever.

[Nevilledog]

1. K & R

[Solly Mack]

2. K&R

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Next-day kick.