Great story, thanks for sharing! And from The Wall Street Journal, of all sources.. Not quite a page from “The Activist Playbook!” 🤠
Best Regards | Cordiales Saludos | Grato, Andrés L. Pacheco Sanfuentes <[email protected]> +1 (347) 766-5008 > On Jun 14, 2020, at 10:37 AM, Yosem Companys <[email protected]> wrote: > > In 2008, Steve Jobs had an assignment for a small team of engineers in > Cupertino: Make the iPhone record video. After seeing that people liked > taking photos with the first iPhones, he wanted to add moving pictures. A > year later, Apple released the iPhone 3GS, the first iPhone to record video. > > About 10 years and 10 iPhone models later, 17-year-old Darnella Frazier found > herself standing on a sidewalk in Minneapolis, swiping on her purple iPhone > 11 lock screen to launch the video camera as fast as possible. > > She hit the red circle and for the next 10 minutes and 9 seconds she held her > phone as steady as she could, capturing George Floyd, a black man crying for > his mother as his face was smashed into the pavement by white police officer > Derek Chauvin. > > “I opened my phone and I started recording because I knew if I didn’t, no one > would believe me,” Ms. Frazier said in a statement provided by her lawyer, > Seth Cobin. > > A day later, May 26, she opened up the Facebook app, and tapped the video of > Mr. Floyd to upload it. The world now knows his name. > > Over the last decade, while tech companies were focused on marketing > megapixels and multiple lenses to better record pastries and puppies, > smartphone cameras found a greater purpose. > > “This is our only tool we have right now. It is the most effective way to get > us justice,” Feidin Santana told me. Mr. Santana used his smartphone in 2015 > to film a police officer killing Walter Scott in South Carolina. > > “The smartphone is a weapon that tells the story. This is going to tell what > happened to me, this is what will tell what took place,” said Arthur Reed, > whose organization Stop the Killing surfaced an anonymously filmed video of > the 2016 killing of Alton Sterling by a police officer in Baton Rouge, La. > > Many white Americans, myself included, failed until recently to grasp one of > the biggest impacts of the smartphone: its ability to make the world witness > police brutality toward African-Americans that was all too easy to ignore in > the past. We could now see, with our own eyes, the black sides of stories > that were otherwise lost when white officers filed their police reports. > > For this column, I looked back at a decade of incriminating cellphone video, > and tracked down many people who bravely used their phones to capture > brutality and tragedy on American streets. > > 2009 - Oscar Grant > > A sequence of full-frame screengrabs from a video of the killing of Oscar > Grant on January 1, 2009. Jamil Dewar recorded it on a flip phone. > 2015 - Walter Scott > > A sequence of full-frame screengrabs from a video of the killing of Walter > Scott on April 4, 2015. Feidin Santana recorded it on a Samsung Galaxy S5. > 2020 - George Floyd > > A sequence of full-frame screengrabs from a video of the killing of George > Floyd on May 25, 2020. Darnella Frazier recorded it on an iPhone 11. > > All said some variation of the same thing: It’s not that these incidents > never happened before, it’s that we have the ability to capture proof and > expose it widely—now, more clearly and indisputably than ever. The > smartphone’s proliferation and evolving user experience is partly to thank, > though through this we’re also discovering its limitations. > > Once upon a time, capturing bystander video was about being in the right > place, at the right time, with the right equipment. > > That is the story of George Holliday on March 3, 1991, brand-new Sony > Handycam in hand as he stood on his balcony with a view of Los Angeles police > officers beating Rodney King. The footage is shaky, the bodies are hard to > make out, the helicopters drown out the screams yet it was enough to set off > what Mr. Holliday calls “the first viral video.” > > It’s also the story of Karina Vargas, who had her Fujifilm Finepix digital > camera the night of Jan. 1, 2009, when she witnessed officer Johannes > Mehserle shooting 22-year-old Oscar Grant III at the Fruitvale BART transit > station in Oakland, Calif. > > Ms. Vargas also had a Motorola Razr cellphone, but she turned on her > 10-megapixel Fujifilm because it could record better quality video. (At the > time, that meant 480p.) In a series of clips, many of them pixelated and > shaky, she captured the officers surrounding Mr. Grant and eventually the > sounds of the gunshots. > > A day later a local television producer came out to watch what she had > recorded; he transferred the footage from her memory card to his laptop and > aired it that day. > > “If I had this iPhone back then I would have taken much better video,” Ms. > Vargas told me. “I would have been able to get closer and I probably would > have shared it to Instagram or another place so everyone could see it.” She > added, “Right now, there is this culture of ‘Let’s f—ing record these cops.’ > It wasn’t that way then.” > > Other bystanders recorded from different angles with cellphones, though their > details were quite blurry. All were submitted as evidence. In 2010, Mehserle > was convicted of second-degree murder. > > Jump ahead to 2014. Ramsey Orta and his 2011 Samsung Galaxy phone captured > 720p high-definition video of Eric Garner, surrounded by New York City police > officers. Mr. Orta filmed police wrestling Mr. Garner to the pavement and > putting him in a chokehold. On the video, he said he couldn’t breathe 11 > times before he died. > > Mr. Orta originally shared the video with the New York Daily News, and it > quickly spread across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The phrase “I can’t > breathe” became a slogan of the Black Lives Matter movement. Though Mr. > Garner’s death was ruled a homicide, the officer involved was not indicted. > > Feidin Santana in North Charleston, S.C., had just gotten a new one from a > friend, a Samsung Galaxy S5 with a 16-megapixel camera. He happened to be > walking to his job when he saw Mr. Scott being chased by officer Michael > Slager. Mr. Santana tapped the camera app and began recording for three > minutes, capturing Slager shooting Mr. Scott five times as he tried to run. > It was the first thing he filmed with the new phone. > > “I was getting used to the phone but in less than a few seconds I was able to > get to the video option,” recalls Mr. Santana, who doesn’t consider himself > tech savvy. > > The video, which was used as evidence in the trial, is shaky and at times > blurry, but readable enough to see key parts of the incident play out. A jury > convicted Slager of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to 20 years in > prison. > > Over the next few years, as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube made uploading, > sharing and viewing mobile video easier, buckets of cellular data dropped in > price, and smartphone ownership among Americans ages 18 to 49 passed 90%, > recordings of police interaction mushroomed. > > On July 5, 2016, one of two videos of police officers killing Alton Sterling > in Baton Rouge, La., was uploaded to Twitter. One officer was later fired but > not charged. The next day, Diamond Reynolds went live on Facebook as she sat > next to her dying boyfriend, Philando Castile, who had just been shot by an > officer in St. Anthony, Minn. The officer was later found not guilty of > second-degree manslaughter. > > That brings us to two weeks ago, when Ms. Frazier, only feet away from George > Floyd and the police officer bearing down on him, captured it all in 1080p > resolution video with the latest iPhone. It’s one of the clearest, > highest-resolution videos of such a situation ever captured. > > “I will post the video in the morning as soon as I wake up. I don’t give a > f—. If it gets taken down I don’t care,” Ms. Frazier said in a live-stream on > Facebook a few hours after recording Mr. Floyd’s killing. “At least you all > will see for yourselves. I’m pretty sure it’s a murder we’ll be seeing on the > news.” Officer Chauvin has since been charged with second-degree murder, the > other officers at the scene have also been charged and the city of > Minneapolis has moved to restructure its police forces. > > Over the past decade, the smartphone changed our behavior. We went from > photographing momentous occasions with specialized equipment—remember buying > cameras?—to constantly, instantaneously capturing and sharing any moment we > choose. Everyone I spoke to who had recorded these scenes of violence used > the same word to describe why they did it: instinct. > > “I knew what was going on wasn’t right. I felt something was about to happen > so I just took out my phone and started recording,” said Brandon Brooks, who > filmed Dajerria Becton, a black teenager, being violently wrestled to the > ground by a white officer in McKinney, Texas, in 2015. A few days later, the > officer resigned. > > But capturing video of apparent brutality by those in power comes with a dark > consequence: fear of retaliation. > > “I didn’t share it right away,” Mr. Santana, the man who filmed the killing > of Walter Scott, told me. “I thought my life might be in danger. It’s a tough > decision to come forward.” He said he feared the police department would come > after him; he also said he wanted to wait to hear the police department’s > side of the story. Ms. Vargas said she still vividly remembers an officer > trying to get a hold of her camera on the train after she filmed the Oakland > shooting of Oscar Grant. > > Allissa Richardson, a journalism professor at University of Southern > California and author of the book “Bearing Witness While Black,” said that > the proliferation of such footage can have an insidious side effect, the > expectation of video where none is available. “We are almost asking black > people to prove they didn’t deserve this [violence]. We don’t ask white > people where the video is after mass shootings,” she said. Plus, the videos > can end up being excessively played in the media, she added. > > And filming police violence doesn’t lead to an open-and-shut case. John > Burris, a civil-rights attorney who represented Mr. Grant’s family, said that > “without the videos all I would have had was the testimony of the > African-American men against several cops. But ultimately the cops had their > own stories about what happened which still made it extraordinarily > difficult.” > > Police officers are increasingly aware of the presence of smartphone cameras, > and aren’t always deterred by them. Police departments have equipped officers > with their own body cams or car dashboard cameras—though smartphone footage > often provides a different vantage point. Some experts say that > qualified-immunity laws and the power of police unions offer bad actors > unwarranted protection. > > “If someone were to do such a violent act knowing they are on camera, that’s > some evil intent right there,” said Sheriff Christopher Swanson, from the > Office of Genesee County Sheriff in Flint, Mich. He believes the killing of > Mr. Floyd will result in widespread police union reform. > > So smartphone videos have been far from a panacea for racial injustice. But > at least now, more than ever, we all can see it, clearly and vividly. > > The cameras will continue to improve. Like any technology story, what we do > with them, and the world we want them to capture, is up to us. > > —Jim Oberman contributed to this article. > > https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-used-smartphone-cameras-to-record-police-brutalityand-change-history-11592020827?mod=djemTECH > > <https://www.wsj.com/articles/they-used-smartphone-cameras-to-record-police-brutalityand-change-history-11592020827?mod=djemTECH>
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