by Scott Creighton
There have now been three videos released showing the fatal shooting of Antonio Martin, an African-American teenager killed by a white police officer in St. Louis County. I discussed the first one yesterday and concluded that from it, no one could determine if that was a gun in Antonio’s hand, unless of course… that is what they WANTED to see.
The three videos are but a small percentage of the 31 cameras covering that area in the vicinity. The police say these are the ONLY ones that caught any of the action. Perhaps they should release all of them and let the public decide which ones caught the action and which did not. But that will never happen.
The officer involved was given a body camera to wear that night as he started his shift… but he “forgot” to wear it.
They also claim, the dashcam which was in the best position to record the entire event as it unfolded in front of the officer’s cruiser… was turned off.
That means, of the 33 videos that should exist of this incident, only 3 have been released.
Those three seem to imply that something was in Antonio’s hand but are certainly not conclusive. However, at least two have been intentionally edited to exclude something critical and one of them seems to show whatever was in Antonio’s hand was glowing… like the screen of a cell phone.
The first video is stopped right at the moment the officer pulls his gun. The frame actually freezes as the video continues meaning it’s a recording of a VIEWING of the video and not the original video itself. That’s the one where you can see Antonio point his hand and possibly something in it, at the officer. The shooting is not shown and I think the reason for that is whatever that was in his hand would fall to the ground and if it was an illuminated cell phone, then as it fell, it could be very clear that’s what it was.
The third video shows the officer basically fleeing from the confrontation, falling on the ground and shooting as he backed up. You can’t seen Antonio in this one at all. You just see the cop’s reaction. As he falls, you can see the flashlight sliding across the parking lot. This video is interesting because the department admits openly that they edited Antonio out of the video “in respect of his family”
I think the most illuminating of these 3 (of 33) is the second video. In it, the camera is position hanging on the soffit of the store just above where the confrontation took place. You can see Antonio and his friend clearly right before the shooting in the bottom left hand corner. Antonio turns back to the officer and appears to have something that is glowing in his right hand.
.
.
I took a screen shot of it:
Go back and watch the video a couple of times. You can pause it right there if you wish. Move it forward and backward frame by frame. What you aren’t going to find is definitive proof that was a gun. What you will notice is it’s illuminated, like a cell phone.
Here’s a gif someone posted to Imgur of that part of the video.
Here’s another pic making it’s way around the Twitter world. It shows a protester holding a camera in much the same way Antonio was holding whatever it was he was holding.
Back to the shooting video, what you will notice is there is no reaction from the guy in the white pants when Antonio points whatever it is at the officer. It seems pretty casual to him… kinda like it would be if someone pointed a phone at a cop. Not like if someone pulled a gun on one.
The guy in the white pants only reacts when the officer started shooting and though that is certainly circumstantial at best, it does help define the character of that particular moment and possibly even indicates what really happened.
The glowing object in Antonio’s hand is certainly worth considering. It could be a cell phone screen or it could be the reflection of the police car’s headlights on an object, whatever that might be. And some will say it’s obviously the reflection of the lights on the gun. You see that all the time in the movies, right?
But there’s just one problem with that theory: the gun itself.
You see, the gun isn’t a shiny nickel or chrome finish gun which it would have to be in order to gleam like that in Antonio’s hand. This is the gun he was supposedly holding in that hand:
As you can see, the gun has a matte black finish. It doesn’t even reflect the light of the camera taking the picture like the evidence tag does. So are we supposed to believe this gun was gleaming bright in Antonio’s hand that night? Personally, I don’t see that happening.
Let’s be honest, these images and videos do not serve to prove this case either way. Frankly, I think the department editing 2 of the three and hiding 30 of the 33 videos probably does more to indict them of trying to hide something than anything else does.
And let’s also be honest about this: whatever he had in his hand, when he took it out quickly and pointed it at the cop while starting to walk toward him, that’s what got him shot. Like the poor kid with the airsoft gun who took it out of his pants while walking up to the police car, there are certain things you cannot do these days to cops and one of them is whip something out of your pants while headed straight toward them.
I’m certainly not saying that kid or Antonio deserved what they got. They didn’t. Well, I can’t be sure about Antonio as of yet, but it would appear to me, that’s not a gun in his hand.
But that really isn’t the point I guess. What is the point is the fact that these departments are still just lying and manipulating evidence, like they’ve always done, in order to present a false narrative of events. But instead of it being a few “bad apples” it seems like it’s becoming institutional right in front of our eyes.
As a reader, Teri, pointed out this morning, the Seattle PD just held a conference looking for “hackers” to edit police videos for release to the public. They claim they need to edit their recordings of encounters with the public in order to protect you. Here’s an AlterNet story on this and the one Teri mentioned is from Raw Story.
The claim from the Seattle PD is that they need “hackers” to blur the faces of the innocent in order to protect their privacy.
Let me explain something: you don’t need “hackers” to do that. If you’re going to blur the face of a bystander in a video, everyone’s going to know you blurred it in an editing process, so all you need is some film editing software and a couple of scrubs straight out of your local community college with an associate’s degree in video production. Either that or a middle school kid with a Youtube account.
It’s not difficult or demanding work… so why do they need “hackers”?
The ONLY reason to hire hackers for something like this is so the changes you make AREN’T given away in the code of the video. That’s the only reason to hire hackers. Changes like those are not blurred faces or license plates folks.
I guess what Seattle has figured out is the fact that “oops we forgot to wear our body cams” and “oops we forgot to turn on the camera” are not going to work forever. In fact, they probably aren’t even working now. Remember the videos from Oklahoma City? How about the Pentagon? In fact, did any of the videos ever surface from the American Gladio campaign shootings? How about that new security system installed in Sandy Hook? Did that video ever come out?
Whatever Antonio had in his hand, he shouldn’t have whipped it out and stepped toward the officer at the same time. The officer should have been aware enough, if it wasn’t a gun, to hold his fire for just that split second to be sure of what that kid had in his hand.
Those things are to me, self evident.
What this story has become is the story of how deception and the falsification of evidence is becoming institutional in our police departments. That’s not to say the cops are doing this, but rather the administrations are.
Body cams are going to do nothing to help the people being policed as long as the administration can simply deny the existence of the videos or openly edit them to suit their needs.