Police body cam videos can underplay officer brutality

Over the last several weeks, social media has been filled with videos of police officers pepper-spraying, bludgeoning, and shooting protestors. They were captured by civilians, recording on smartphones — not by police body cameras. That changes how people understand the events on the video, helping protestors rather than police shape the narrative.

Many people treat video footage, regardless of where it comes from, as objective evidence, says Mary Fan, a professor at the University of Washington School of Law who studies cameras and police encounters. “The temptation is to see it as a window into what really happened,” she says. But that’s not the case: the place the video comes from has a big impact on how people interpret it.

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