Meet the groups who are filming police violence

(Mark Makela/Getty)

While listening to the police scanner application on his cellphone, Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed heard the makings of what could be a violent confrontation between police and a suspect. Soon after, he rushed to the Triple S. Food Mart in Baton Rouge where two police officers had shot and killed Alton Sterling at point blank range. Reed arrived at the scene where several of his activists filmed the altercation—they immediately knew how significant the footage was, but wanted to wait for police to release a public statement on the shooting. “We wanted to wait to hear what police had to say, and make sure we had enough copies of our videos in the community,” Reed told The Independent, “so that when police did get their hands on the video it wasn’t something that they could destroy.”

The statement never came, so Reed distributed the footage to 125 supporters of Stop The Killing, his anti-violence nonprofit, who published the video on social media and sent copies to The Associated Press, which led to worldwide news coverage and outrage turning the public into key eyewitnesses. It wasn’t long before millions viewed the graphic footage: two officers pinning the 37-year-old Sterling on the ground before at least one officer fired multiple rounds into Sterling’s chest and back. The video is bloody and explicit, but unfortunately nothing new for the anti-violence group, whose filmed more than 30 violent interactions in the community over the years.

The next morning, Reed found himself calling for justice at a news conference alongside Sterling's family members: Sterling’s 15-year-old son, Cameron, and his mother Quinyetta McMillan. “I never want my kid to hurt like that, I felt for Cameron,” Reed said. “I never want my son or my brothers to experience anything like that.” When asked which members of the group recorded the videos, Reed declined to answer citing the safety of each member. He also declined to allow other members of the group to be interviewed, as a means to protect their identities: “We’re at risk every day; we’re going against licensed killers,” he said, adding that he’s not afraid of the work they’re doing. “I believe in this, and I hope others do too.”

Reed, a 43-year-old former gang leader, founded Stop The Killing in 2001 following a near-fatal car accident that left several passengers — his friends — dead. Reed, the lone survivor of the crash, pulled himself from the wreckage, and says God sent him a message which became the motivation to turn his life around. Stop The Killing is comprised of Reed and six other activists who listen to police activity on several different mobile phone applications, attentively listening to reports of violent crime and equipping themselves with cellphone cameras and sometimes professional DSLRs. The group’s primary goal is to steer young people away from self-destructive behaviors including gang activity and drug use. They also teach kids how to solve their problems without resorting to violence.

“We’re trying to wake these individuals up with the images that we have,” Reed said. “We’re concerned about all the black lives in the community, not just the ones that police officers kill.” He stressed that the group films more than police interactions, usually working to prevent gun violence within Louisiana’s black community by creating documentaries with the footage and showing the films at demonstrations. “We would like to see more people become active in the community, stop the violence among themselves and take on a different mindset.”

“I was a gang leader for 22 years, I’ve been shot multiple times, and I’ve lost hundreds of friends to violence over the years,” he said. Back in 1999, Reed used to say that he “had more t-shirts than friends,” referring to clothing featuring portraits of victims who were close to him. “When I looked at the t-shirts that I was wearing at the time, I saw people that I loved and cared about—it was hard on me,” he said. “God pulled me out of that and gave me this mission.”

Police watching groups in communities of color, similar to Stop The Killing, are nothing new, and date back to the inception of the Black Panthers in the 1960s. In those days, party members listened in on the Oakland Police Department via radio scanners and showed up to potential crime scenes, standing 20 feet away, exercising their right to bare arms. They mainly sought to ensure there were no instances of police brutality at the hands of the city’s all-white police force.

WeCopwatch founder Jacob Crawford adopted a similar mentality when it came to filming the police, minus the loaded rifles and those fantastic all-black turtlenecks with military attire. Crawford began independently documenting police behavior in 2000 in the Oakland area before the rise of technology leading to cell phone cameras, YouTube, Twitter, and before popular other social media outlets developed into massively successful platforms. Crawford says there were plenty examples of police misconduct in his neighborhood in northern California, and that encouraged him to use a video camera to record cops.

As Crawford’s group of young activists became more unified, it matured into his own nationwide coalition in 2012. His activists eventually filmed the protests that followed the police killings which sparked the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. WeCopwatch receives no regular donations and operates in more than 20 states including Austin, Ferguson, Baltimore, North Charleston, New York City, Chicago and Detroit. Crawford calls his craft Copwatching, which he defines as “the direct non-violent observation of the police.” In his experience, “Copwatching” is A method of resistance: “I'm very inspired at how police reacted to being observed and videotaped while they were stopping people in my neighborhood,” Crawford said. “Even with the most hostile interactions you can see the changes. A person could be getting yelled at and within minutes, things would de-escalate, and people would be un-cuffed.”

When arriving at police stops, Copwatch activists are first encouraged to make their presence known, maintain a safe distance from the officers involved, and to communicate verbally or with body language to the person stopped to inform them that they are there to film the interaction. “We also train them not to interfere with police stops, but rather use their presence as the deterrence to any potential police misconduct,” Crawford says. “We teach people to treat it as though they are dealing with a hostage situation, as a negotiator, they do not want to add any tension or problems to an already tense situation. We’re always caring about the wellbeing of the person stopped, because if you agitate the situation, the police are more likely to take it out on the suspect.”

Dennis Flores, 40, a Copwatch leader in New York City, has filmed the police for more than 20 years. He’s currently leading a coalition of more than 15 groups of activists who plan on recording police behavior at the upcoming Black Lives Matter protests across the city. Flores says he’s been locked up, has had his arm broken by officers, and has sued and won lawsuits against the New York Police Department. “There’s a risk with what we do,” Flores says, “but it’s important for our communities and families, it’s important for the world to see.”

Copwatchers are cautious of immediately releasing unedited videos, or live-streaming events to prevent police from writing their incident reports around incriminating footage. Before the rise of social media and cellphone cameras, Crawford released footage of police misconduct and officers rejected the importance of his video by saying the public wasn’t aware of what happened before the incriminating footage. Waiting to release the video, diminishes the officer’s ability to lie. “If I film the cops baton somebody in the head, I’m going to release that baton strike, but I’m not going to show what happens beforehand. The officer will have to justify using deadly force,” Crawford says, “let them only see the clip, and as it goes viral, the officer will attempt to justify their actions by lying.”

Crawford and Reed both observed that documenting an officer’s actions could potentially check their behavior and prevent instances of police misconduct. If your actions are made public, you will feel inclined to act within the law. This is the rationale for providing police with body cameras, but unfortunately, is not without flaws. Both officers implicated in the case the case of Alton Sterling’s death were wearing cameras that conveniently fell off before the struggle between them and Sterling ensued.

In another highly publicized police shooting that took place the same week, a 34-year-old black man, Philando Castile, was fatally shot by an officer in Minnesota while his girlfriend Diamond “Lavish” Reynolds live streamed the aftermath of the deadly traffic stop on Facebook. Both Copwatch and Stop The Killing members agree that waiting to release videos of police misconduct to the public is the best method of distributing footage unless you’re live streaming in self-defense, as displayed in Reynolds’ case. They also shared the grim prediction that no matter how many incremental changes departments are forced to make in the years to come, folks will be obliged to organize and film the police to hold them accountable for their actions.

Jonathan Smith, a former top lawyer with the Justice Department who supervised the agency’s investigations into the Cleveland and Ferguson police departments, realizes the importance of citizen filmed documentation, too. “I can’t tell you how many dashcam videos I’ve seen where the officers just so happen to bump their dashcam as they’re getting out of the vehicle. So, then the dashcam is pointing at the ceiling and not at what’s going on, and the incident takes place outside the view of the camera,” Smith tells me when I ask how good the police are at documenting themselves. But, “there have been problems with the use of cameras and whether they’re going to be the solution to all the problems between police and the communities they serve,” he adds.

Smith says that officers may not always want their actions filmed, and they will likely go out of their way to find effective measures to obstruct cameras—or the activists attempting to film them. “It was only four or five years ago that officers were pushing against the right for citizens to take video of stops.” He says there are only so many relevant, yet incremental, reforms the Justice Department can make to combat police misconduct — and since the Federal Government is essentially powerless to stop the problem, citizens are in the driver’s seat when it comes to holding cops accountable.

And in the aftermath of the sniper attacks in Dallas, where five police officers were shot and killed by a black Army reservist reportedly upset with the recent police shootings, Smith anticipates an even greater pushback from law enforcement when it comes to citizen documentation. “Here we are out two years from Michael Brown’s death, you had people all across the country marching, you’ve had thousands of words spoken by politicians by what they think about reform, and police chiefs speaking of training, but fundamentally, nothing has changed,” Smith said. “There have been a couple of departments who have implemented new policies and training with little change.”

As much as technology has enhanced the abilities of civilians who film the police, it may have also opened new pathways to intimidation from law enforcement. Abdullah Muflahi, the owner of the Triple S. Food Mart, claims that police detained him for several hours after he recorded his own footage of the fatal interaction between Sterling and two Baton Rouge police officers. Muflahi has since filed a lawsuit claiming that police seized security footage of the shooting from his store without a warrant. Chris LeDay also claims that he was unlawfully detained after his clip of the incident went viral. LeDay, who grew up in Baton Rouge and now lives in Marietta, Georgia, published the footage for the woman who filmed the video feared retaliation from police. Less than 24 hours later, 10 military police officers arrested him at his employer, the Dobbins Air Reserve Base. “I just made it to my job on base and I'm being detained,” LeDay wrote on Facebook. “They said I fit the description of someone and won't tell me anything else.” He claims he was first suspected of assaulting a person and was later informed that he was arrested for unpaid parking tickets.

“You shouldn’t have to fear for your life when police are around, so we’re pushing this movement. At the end of the day, I understand justice is far from reality,” Reed says. “I look at Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and Eric Garner—I look at all of these cases and see that there’s a unified effort to destroy black and brown people. And because the brother-in-laws, uncles, and cousins of police officers are sitting in positions that make the decisions, none of these individuals are being taken to jail."