Next Up: Kill the Messenger

How long before "officer involved shooting" results in the death of witnesses?  Will legislation to make it illegal to tape police officers occur first?

So important has citizen documentation become that the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have created smartphone apps that allow onlookers to observe, record and report.

“In communities where men, women and children are profiled, arrested, beaten and even killed under suspicious circumstances and at alarming rates, citizens need to be able to create an accurate record of their interactions with police,” Darrell Dawsey, spokeman for the ACLU of Michigan, wrote when that state’s “Mobile Justice MI” app was released in June 2015.

[...]

Jacob Crawford is an Oakland-based founding member of WeCopwatch, which monitors police encounters with the public. On multiple occasions, he said, he has been afraid for his life.

Activists at Copwatch-type groups around the country sometimes get in shouting matches with the police and also get arrested.

"As they have become bolder and more confrontational, group members have increasingly encroached upon officers at scenes of law enforcement activity,” Deputy Police Chief Leland Strickland in Arlington, Texas, wrote in a department memo in 2014.

Crawford said problems can arise as more with people attempt to film police stops alone and without proper training.

  LA Times

Proper training? Training to avoid being shot.

Joaquin Cienfuegos, an organizer at Cop Watch LA, explained some of the safety precautions that his organization recommends: Observers should go out in groups, stand within a reasonable distance and be careful not to interfere with the police investigation.

Livestream capability has become a new tool for Copwatch members because it allows them to share incidents before police have a chance to confiscate phones or build an official narrative about what happened, Cienfuegos said.

In the recent case in Minnesota, Cienfuegos said, “If she wasn’t livestreaming that, none of this [strong public response] would’ve happened.”