Legal Commentary

The Citizen Witness As Video Journalist

By TChris

After reading this, I fiddled around with my cell phone until I learned how to use the video camera.

The videotaped shooting death of Oscar Grant by a BART police officer on New Year’s Day marks how far technology has advanced since the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King. The cell phone video recorded by BART rider Katrina Vargas shows that Grant was unarmed, and that he apparently was not acting in a manner that would compel an officer to consider using a firearm. Grant’s death was recorded by several other cell phone video cameras, and may have been recorded by BART security cameras. The videos were posted immediately on the Internet, where they were seen by thousands, if not millions of people before being picked up by the Mainstream News Media.

Here's the video. BART's Board of Directors personally apologized for the senseless killing. Protests in Oakland have taken a misguidedly violent turn.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 08, 2009 (boomark / email).