Albuquerque Police Chief Allen Banks talks about a still image Dec. 13, 2013, taken from an officer’s lapel camera, before the shooting of an armed suspect. 
Russell Contreras/AP
How is it that despite compelling video evidence, justice can be so elusive for the victims of police brutality? This is a question that has to be asked after the failure of a Staten Island grand jury to indict a New York City police officer for the death of Eric Garner.
We live in an age of video. As more and more of our lives are being filmed, we are amassing massive catalogs of potential evidence. Yet so little of this is finding its way into our political, legal or justice systems.
Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel is a musician, activist, and co-founder/Chair of the Board of Directors of the human rights organization WITNESS.
The evidence being trusted in courts today is most often based on our fallible memories, spoken evidence produced long after the event, which in turn, is being proved to be unreliable at best and often re-imagined. Video has the capability to put more reality into the world of “remembered” evidence.
If we want people to use the legal system to resolve disputes, rather than more dangerous or violent options, the system has to be trusted. Lord Chief Justice of England, Gordon Hewart’s famous maxim says, “Justice must not only be done, but must be seen to be done.”
Having one’s story be seen and heard anywhere in the world should be a fundamental right for those who have suffered.
Justice flourishes in the light, in openness and transparency, in which the defense and prosecution are seen to be treated fairly and given equal opportunity. Injustice is bred in darkness, in closed hearings and in a hidden process in which cozy backroom relationships can develop. In these situations, it is easy to put a slant on a case or prevent critical evidence from being seen or heard. The Internet revolution has exposed so much of what has, for so long, been hidden in our world. It’s time for justice to become a new focus.
The call to end police violence is not a negation of the dangers police themselves face, as evidenced by the tragic killings of two officers in Brooklyn, NY earlier this month. It is a call to overhaul a system that perpetuates racial injustice. Video technology will play an important part in that system change.
How Technology Can Legitimize Video Evidence
Law, like language, has to reflect the needs of the times. Justice systems in the United States and around the world urgently need to consider comprehensive appraisal of video as a potentially reliable form of evidence. Technology and the individuals using it can help make this happen.
Technology already exists that can aid us in proving a piece of video is authentic (hasn’t been tampered with, manipulated or edited in any way) or even prove the unique “signature” of the person who filmed it. If that is possible, why would a prosecutor need to present evidence to a grand jury to ask for an indictment where technology has presented irrefutable, visual evidence of a possible crime? Would that not be enough to indict a suspect and go to trial?
The full introduction of verified videos could be as critical as the introduction of forensics into criminal investigations and trials.
Tech companies can help make possible a “proof mode” that would enable investigators, journalists, and audiences to know if a piece of media is authentic. The proof mode would be accessed through a specific app, an option on a device or a media-sharing platform such as YouTube. It would incorporate and preserve important metadata such as the location and time and date a video file’s creation. This additional information would ensure a file’s integrity. In some cases, a file could have more metadata saved to a third-party site for further verification.
Furthermore, phones are already being designed, at companies like Qualcomm, to include 3D scanning, which can potentially provide hard evidence of exactly where people were at a specific moment in a particular environment.
In Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother uses video surveillance as a primary instrument of control. Today, billions of “little sisters and brothers,” are equipped with video devices, most often embedded in their mobile phones. Their regular vigilance and exposure of human rights abuses—like police brutality—can bring real pressure for change.
The sheer volume of video now being recorded will inevitably capture future instances of abuse. Will the next grand jury or prosecutor’s office be able to deny the power of such a video, as they did the video of Mr. Garner being placed in a chokehold and uttering those disturbing words, “I can’t breathe,” over and over again before collapsing?
The chances are slimmer when this enormous volume of citizen video is organized, easier to find and verified. Better tagging of videos by their creators and by the platforms to which they upload them can ensure that they can be found. Through using the data embedded in the media, investigators and advocates can create timelines or put multiple videos together into a cohesive story of an incident. A story that is less dependent on unreliable memories and based more on video evidence. This could be particularly helpful in cases where there is a question about false accusations being made against someone, whether a police officer or a citizen.
How I Got Involved in Documenting Injustice
You may be asking yourself why a musician has so much interest in the possibility of video to document, expose and prevent police violence and other human rights abuses. Here’s why:
In 1991 another police brutality incident caught on video caused an international uproar: the beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles. The following year we were able to get the support to create the nonprofit organization WITNESS. I had proposed the idea two years earlier after meeting human rights abuse survivors on the Amnesty International music tours of the late 1980s. It was obvious that when video evidence existed it was extremely hard for the perpetrators of those abuses to deny and bury what had happened. The Rodney King incident made very clear that ordinary people could use video to witness abuse and use it to campaign for justice and change.
Today, WITNESS provides resources and trains a new generation of citizen advocates to make effective and safe use of video for human rights and it works on innovative technology solutions that allow citizen media to play a stronger part in creating accountability in criminal justice cases.
From Syria to Staten Island citizens are exposing the truth with video. These citizen witnesses are bringing victims’ stories directly to our screens, revealing names and images that we might otherwise have never known.
Peter Gabriel. Clemens Niehaus/Geisler-Fotopres/picture-alliance/dpa/AP
Having one’s story be seen and heard anywhere in the world should be a fundamental right for those who have suffered. The act of recording and sharing a story of abuse can protect that right, ensure transparency and bring justice a little a closer.
These visual stories are bringing people to the streets, helping to pressure for reform, making it nearly impossible for lawmakers and politicians to be silent.
People old enough to remember will recall that the video of the Rodney King beating, failed to convince a jury of any guilt of the LAPD officers involved in the ensuing criminal case. This is not a failure of video, but a reminder that for issues like police brutality, which have deep systemic roots, and touch inbuilt prejudices, the struggle to end it will not come quickly.
Putting cameras in phones has put them directly into the hands of billions of people around the world, empowering billions of potential witnesses.
To ignore their experiences—and their evidence—is to ignore the foundation of real justice, the truth.
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