Why do we have to watch police beat a man to death to know there's a problem?
Almost daily, I get reports from sources about people who’ve died in jail. From overdoses, from getting shit beaten out of them by guards or other inmates, from starving to death after being in solitary for a year as a paranoid schizophrenic.
Unless there’s video, no one cares, except for the people I call criminal justice lunatics: the advocates, reporters, and lawyers who’ve been red-pilled, to use a bad analogy, into knowing about the horrors that unfold in US jails and prisons and at the hands of officers.
How sick are we as a society? The Tyre Nichols story wouldn’t have broken into the New York Times if it weren’t for the video. Cable news wouldn’t have come near it. It likely would have been a local story. And if it had made a national publications, it would have been presented in the usual, wavering, “Police say,” way. I respect Chief C.J. Davis for stepping up and firing the officers. Bill de Blasio took 5 years to fire the cop who killed Eric Garner. But I’m sad to say that maybe she wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t for the video. In fact, I bet that even with the video, it wouldn’t have been as big of a story if public officials had not (by accident or purpose, I don’t know) practically built a suspenseful countdown to the release.
We’re a sick society riveted by spectacle, blah blah blah, it’s an obvious point to make. What can we do about it? We can’t un-watch 50 years of violent media or become un-inured to the real violence of constant mass shootings.
So I guess…. let’s make sure there’s video.
FOIA surveillance footage from jails in cases of suspicious deaths. If they try to claim it risks public safety by sharing information about jail layout (OK) get a law group like the local chapter of the ACLU involved.
Most cities at this point have surveillance cameras everywhere. Many are private business cameras. If an incident occurs, you can always ask them if you could see the footage.
Get inmates burner phones.
Programs like JailATM let you pay 99 cents to give an inmate access to a tablet for an hour.
Start or join an existing watchdog group, like Copwatch, that films police encounters. One of their guys, Jose LaSalle, secretly recorded policing plotting to frame him and laugh about it and got massive settlement.
And lobby against laws that try to restrict civilians filming police.