I'm sure you've all seen it: the tragic death of Oscar Grant at the hands of a BART police officer who pulled out his weapon and fired it into the back of the unarmed man with a knee on his neck. Why am I sure you've seen it? Because it is everywhere: CNN, YouTube, blogs galore. And once you've seen it, it's nearly impossibly to erase from the mind.
You've seen the death of a young father by a sworn officer on duty to protect the peace because cell phones have become more technologically advanced, all the while decreasing in price. Cheap, flip phones have video cameras as standard features. Smart phones have really good ones, some that zoom. On your average BART train car you can bet that 30% of passengers has the ability to record your actions. 50% or so, I'd wager, can take your photo.
So, what was the impact of those phones with tiny camcorders on that night, New Years Eve at the Fruitvale station in Oakland?
First and foremost it meant the act was recorded, and from a variety of vantage points. Sure, the BART station has security cameras, but videos by riders mean a wider range of views of the incident, which provides more information about what happened. Always a good thing. But how forthcoming would BART have been with those security camera tapes? Naturally, they'd turn them over at the order of a judge, but would they hand them over to the press and right away? Dubious.
All those cameras meant that some of the video of the shooting got passed along to the press. This resulted in at least two significant outcomes: 1) outrage amongst the citizenry and subsequent riots 2) it was sensationalized by a media seeking ratings. This means that the same video that informed citizens of the Bay Area was also filtered by a media who, simply by adding anchor commentary, slow-mo editing and constant repetition, have altered the perception of the reality of what happened that night.
Will all that cell phone video of Oscar Grant's shooting mean a definite change of venue for BART officer Johannes
Mehserle? The video has been so widely distributed that it has saturated the Bay
Area. You couldn't avoid it for days.
TheDefaultAttorney suggested that perhaps the defense would not
seek a change of venue since, "
he might get
sympathy from Oakland residents tired of crime." That's an interesting
point, because, despite the broad brush used 24 hour cable news
networks and inflammatory national bloggers, those rioting in Oakland
since Grant's death do not represent the people of Oakland as a whole.
Hell, Nia Sykes is from San Francisco. It would be folly to say the
rioting was the work of only professional revolutionaries, but there
was certainly a strong contingent of them out there tearing stuff up.
Will the cell phone video saturation force a change of venue or will
the defense bet on the quiet but stewing Oakland citizenry who are
outraged--not only by Grant's death, but the crime and violence rampant
in much of their city, all but ignored by a do-nothing Mayor.
And, what effect will the confiscation of phones and cameras by BART police following the shooting mean for future incidents? Will "citizen journalists" be more cautious and surreptitious with their taping in the future? Will more and more people tape incidents on mass transit now that they know what impact it can have? Can police really ever manage to take all the phones and cameras when something like this happens? The technology just might be too prevalent now for that sort of control.
What is apparent is that this situation would have played out altogether differently if cell phone video did not exist. What is obvious is that this technology is changing the way we take in news, and it is affecting crime, punishment and justice in ways we never imagined.
