Of all the things that upset Gavin Long — the former U.S. Marine who fatally shot three Baton Rouge police officers Sunday — at the top of the list was the fact that authorities have thus far withheld body-worn camera footage in the July 5 police shooting of a Black man named Alton Sterling, which also took place in Baton Rouge.
“Yes they said the body cam fell off (and so allegedly thats why we couldnt see the shooting), but we (the people) still have a right to see the video no matter what happened,” Long reportedly wrote.
“Let us see what was recorded anyway!” Long continued. “We cant just take their word!”
The issue of withholding of footage from police body-worn cameras — or BWCs — is much more than just a sore spot for the slain cop killer.
It is also a contentious issue that touches on matters of community trust, transparency and privacy, and is in dire need of more research, according to Cynthia Lum, associate professor of criminology at George Mason University and author of “Existing and Ongoing Body Worn Camera Research: Knowledge Gaps and Opportunities.”
“On the one hand, they can be useful to increase transparency and accountability,” Lum, director of the Center for Evidence-Based Crime Policy at GMU, said of BWCs.
“But on the other hand, BWCs may be the most useful in protecting the police against citizen complaints, which I don’t think proponents of BWCs initially envisioned as a goal.”
