Charlotte Observer. April 25, 2021.
Editorial: Video delay in Elizabeth City police shooting fuels uncertainty and tensions
Exactly what happened when Pasquotank County Sheriff’s deputies fatally shot Andrew Brown Jr. in Elizabeth City has not yet been revealed, but one thing is clear: North Carolina’s body camera law needs to be fixed.
The shooting occurred Wednesday just a day after the conviction of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis had brought reassurance that police officers will be held accountable for unlawful fatal encounters. Now controversy around Brown’s killing has revived the issue and videos from the deputies’ body cameras are being withheld. In the absence of the videos, the public is left to speculate, witness accounts can’t be verified and tensions are needlessly increased.
“We’re going into 72 hours of this thing, and still there’s no answers,” Elizabeth City Councilman Gabriel Adkins said Friday. “Each day that goes by, there’s more pain and more anger.”
At issue is a provision of the North Carolina law that prevents the public release of police-worn body camera and dashboard camera videos unless approved by a judge. In signing the bill in 2016, then-Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said it would set up “clear and distinct procedures and standards by which a law enforcement agency may disclose or release a recording from a body-worn or dashboard camera.”
In practice, setting up obstacles to releasing police videos only adds to confusion and undermines police credibility.
Elizabeth City Mayor Bettie Parker said during a Saturday news conference that body camera videos should be released within a day or two after an incident. “Come on now, this doesn’t make sense,” she said. “We have to wait forever to get the body cam - 24 hours or 48 hours is enough. So let’s just change this.”
Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat and former state attorney general, has rightly called for the prompt release of the videos as the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) looks into the shooting.
“Initial reports of the shooting in Elizabeth City and death of Andrew Brown Jr. this week are tragic and extremely concerning,” Cooper tweeted Friday. “The body camera footage should be made public as quickly as possible and the SBI should investigate thoroughly to ensure accountability.”
Next, Cooper should call for a change in the law. Prior cases show that the prompt release of police-worn body camera and dash camera videos strengthens public confidence that the investigation will pursue accountability wherever the facts lead. That confidence is especially important in racially charged cases involving the deaths of Black people at the hands of white officers. Leaving the facts unclear can spur rumors and false accounts that lead to violent protests.
The prompt release also can support police actions. In Columbus, Ohio, police released body camera video within hours of a police officer fatally shooting a 16-year-old Black girl who charged at two people with a knife on Tuesday. The video shows the white officer apparently saved a young woman from being stabbed.
“I understand the outrage and the emotion about this incident,” Columbus Director of Public Safety Ned Pettus Jr. said at a news conference. “The video shows there is more to this. It requires us to pause.”
The need to see police videos of the Elizabeth City shooting is especially clear given the information that has surfaced. Brown, a 42-year-old Elizabeth City resident, was shot in his car as he apparently tried to flee a group of deputies who had come to his home to serve search and arrests warrants. Seven Pasquotank County deputies have been put on leave after the shooting. The deputies’ body camera videos should show whether Brown was a threat, or whether the officers shot into his vehicle to prevent his escape.
A state Senate bill offered by three Democrats just weeks before the Elizabeth City shooting – Senate Bill 510 – would make body cam videos subject to release after a 48-hour period., though law enforcement agencies could ask a judge to block release of portions or all of a video.
North Carolina law should be changed to serve the purpose of police-worn body and dash cameras – to provide a prompt visual account to the public when police use force.
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Winston-Salem Journal. April 26, 2021.
Editorial: Replace the monuments
The Confederacy, it seems, has fallen out of fashion.
It only took 156 years.
It also took several high-profile actions and events - like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville - to galvanize opposition to the symbols of white supremacy that stood unashamed and unchallenged in public squares across the South.
But society has changed - society is always changing - and with it, the level of tolerance available for symbols of the Confederacy.
In 2020, 168 symbols of the Confederacy were removed from public spaces, according to a recent report from the Southern Poverty Law Center. Twenty-four of those were in North Carolina; 71 in Virginia. Alabama and Texas tied for third with 12 each.
By comparison, the center’s report indicates that only 58 monuments came down between 2015 and 2019.
In Winston-Salem, the Confederate monument that stood downtown since 1905 came down in March 2019 after the city declared it a public nuisance.
A Confederate statue that stood in Asheville since 1897 - a 75-foot obelisk that honored politician and white supremacist Zebulon Baird Vance - was removed last month and is slated to be destroyed rather than moved to another location.
Last year, a Confederate statue that was the site of Ku Klux Klan ceremonies in the 1920s and ’30s was removed from downtown Lexington after standing since 1905.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, committees are currently meeting to discuss new names for buildings that had been named for individuals - Charles B. Aycock, Julian S. Carr and Josephus Daniels - who had ties to white supremacy and racism.
And in Graham, Alamance County, the N.C. NAACP recently sued to have a 1914-dedicated Confederate statue removed. The monument - currently surrounded by an iron fence that cost $32,000 to install last month - has been a flash-point between protesters and counter-protesters and police for months.
“Specifically, the monument exalts the causes of slavery, secession, and white supremacy. It causes particular pain to Black residents. And it wastes taxpayer dollars on security costs that will be unnecessary once the statue topped by an armed Confederate soldier is gone,” the North Carolina NAACP said in a news release.
After years of discussion and pleading their cause, some might still insist that these monuments are benign, meant to honor heritage and courage.
But they’ve failed to convince the American public that they should share in that interpretation.
It’s no accident that these monuments were first installed around the beginning of the 20th century, accompanied by Jim Crow laws intended to prevent Black Americans from voting; they were meant to serve as reminders in their communities that white people still ruled supreme.
Monument supporters are wrong when they say their removals are attempts to “erase history.” Schools and museums will continue to teach the short-lived history of the Confederacy and the long-lived history of racism in America.
But they’re right about other objections they’ve expressed: There are more important issues to tackle than concrete images, including the bigotry they portray. White supremacy still exists and seems to be experiencing a surge in some quarters, sometimes in organized groups that threaten and practice violence. Economic inequity exists as the residue of advantages given to some and denied others because of their race.
Removing these statues won’t change things, certainly not overnight.
We still prefer not having them in our town squares, as if the figures and ideals they portray deserve praise. Let them stand in museums as educational tools or in cemeteries as symbols of the dead.
In their place, we should install symbols that represent American values like justice, equality and freedom. That would be a worthy task for our artists.
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