In news that both affirms some strategies for police accountability and details how far those strategies have to go, the Baltimore Sun reports that the number of officers charged in shootings has increased from five in 2014 to fifteen through November 2015. According to the Sun:
In the past, the annual average was fewer than five officers charged. In the final weeks of 2015, that number has climbed to 15, with 10 of the cases involving video.
"If you take the cases with the video away, you are left with what we would expect to see over the past 10 years — about five cases," said Philip Stinson, the Bowling Green State University criminologist who compiled the statistics from across the nation. "You have to wonder if there would have been charges if there wasn't video evidence."
The importance of video was highlighted last week with the release of footage showing a Chicago officer fatally shooting a teenager 16 times. The officer said he feared for his life from the teen, who was suspected of damaging cars using a small knife. He also had a powerful hallucinogen in his bloodstream.
This year has certainly shown the importance of accountability strategies—most notably, video—in pursuing justice for those killed, injured, or harmed by police encounters and also in peeling back layers of rampant lies or corruption. Not only have police videos been involved in ten shooting convictions, they have also saved a man from a police cover-up and conspiracy. Video has led to the first first-degree murder conviction of a police officer in 35 years in Chicago in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald, although that case is shrouded in claims of corruption and shady prosecutor practice.
However, other cases showcase the limits of video. Grand juries failed to even indict Cleveland and New York officers Tim Loehmann and Daniel Pantaleo in the deaths of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, respectively. Both of these deaths became widely known precisely because of video of the incidents.
But they are tragedies that illustrate just how difficult it is to even charge police officers with wrongdoing. It appears likely that neither Loehmann nor Pantaleo would have even faced disciplinary action if there had been no video. Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan failed to indict Pantaleo in a grand jury and Cuyahoga County prosecutor Tim McGinty appears to be setting the stage for Loehmann to walk free.
