Ferguson, Missouri, August 13, 2014, protests over the police murder of Michael Brown.
Barack Obama was president in 2014 when a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed Michael Brown. After Mike Brown’s death, youth in Ferguson rose up fiercely. The Obama administration scrambled to look like it was doing something, so it allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to supply police departments across the country with body cameras. Supposedly, use of the cameras would increase “transparency” and make the police more accountable for the atrocities they routinely perpetrate.
The Body Cam Reform has turned out to be a complete and utter scam. As the New York Times recently reported after a six-month investigation, police departments “across the country have routinely delayed releasing footage, released only partial or redacted [edited] video or refused to release it at all. They have frequently failed to discipline or fire officers when body cameras document abuse and have kept footage from the agencies charged with investigating police misconduct.”
This is no coincidence. It doesn’t simply show corruption and deceit on the part of police and prosecutors, though there is plenty of that. Suppressing the release of body cam footage, distorting it, editing it, allowing cops to view it before they make their statements … all that and more is built into the laws and policies mandating use of body cams. To put it in computer language, it’s a feature—not a bug.
South Carolina: “We Never Release That Footage”
South Carolina was the first state that required all cops to have body cameras. Last year at least 19 people were killed by police in South Carolina. Authorities there have released footage in three of those cases—when they thought it served their purpose. When the Times asked the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s office why it had not released any of the others, a spokesperson pointed to a supposed loophole in the law’s wording and replied, “We never release that footage.”
New York City: 380 “Critical Incidents”—2 Videos Released
Massive protests rocked New York City after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. In that period the NYPD announced that it would release footage of what it calls “critical incidents” within 30 days. There have been 380 of these incidents since then—NYPD has released footage within a month twice. And, as the Times reported, “The department often does not release video at all.”
And what about when video evidence is there for the world to see? Obama issued his plan to provide 50,000 body cams to police across the country in early December 2014. A few days later, a grand jury in New York City announced it was not indicting the pigs who choked Eric Garner to death on a New York sidewalk, in broad daylight, in front of cameras that took videos displaying the deadly assault around the world.
Stills from the video of the police murder of Eric Garner. The NYC pigs who choked him to death were not indicted, just days after Obama issued his plan to provide 50,000 body cams to police across the country. Twitter
What Is REALLY Needed to End This Horror… And All the Other Horrors as Well
The cold truth is, the number of people killed and brutalized by police has risen since the use of police body cams became widespread across the country (see “After Years of Promises and Reforms, the Plague of Police Violence and Murder Got Even Worse in 2023—Only Revolution Can End This Madness”). The number of murdering cops arrested and tried has not.
This body cam scam was not only utterly worthless, it was worse! Because now there is the impression that if the police killings were “unlawful” or questionable, then the video would have been released. But this has not happened. Why? Because this system cannot work without police being able to murder—as Bob Avakian has said, “because that is their job”.
The truth is that we cannot end this scourge on oppressed people without a real revolution. That means millions fighting to defeat and dismantle the machinery of repression of this system, to establish a new power, and to set about building a system that could actually end this madness and uproot the causes of police murder and mass incarceration.
At a time like this, when there is talk of civil war and the rulers themselves are at each other’s throats, what was not possible before could become possible now, if… if there is a force ready to bring people forward in the midst of the craziness to actually bring something far better out of it. As is said in REVOLUTION: BUILDING UP THE BASIS TO GO FOR THE WHOLE THING WITH A REAL CHANCE TO WIN: Strategic Orientation and Practical Approach:
Think of the millions of people, of all races and genders, who rose up with righteous anger, all over the country, in 2020, when the murder of George Floyd by a heartless pig was just too much…. [Then] think what could be possible if millions were mobilized into the streets again—not just to express their anger, but with the understanding and determination to do what needs to be done to really put an end to police terror and murder, to white supremacy, male supremacy and gender oppression, and to all the inequality, discrimination, exploitation, plunder and destruction of people and the environment that is built into this system of capitalism-imperialism—to put an end to this in the only way it can be done: by putting an end to the system itself, and bringing something much better into being.
This is serious. Go here to learn more about this revolution and its leader, Bob Avakian. And get with the revcoms, who are working urgently every day to get into position to actually lead millions to make this revolution.
