The Business of Police Brutality

[F]law School Episode 12: The Body (S)camera

How corporations manipulate public fears and deepen police power all for profit.

Priya Pookkulam

March 2, 2025

Summary:

In this episode of [F]law School, hosts Shyun Moon and Sam Perri take a hard look at the rise of police body cameras with third-year law student Priya Pookkulam—and what they uncover is anything but accountability.

Priya traces the origins of body cameras as a so-called reform, revealing how companies like Axon have profited off public outrage while deepening police power. She explains how departments manipulate footage—blurring, muting, and editing key moments—to justify violent encounters. And she breaks down how the body cam industry isn’t fixing the problem of police brutality—it’s fueling the surveillance state.

Editors:

Special thanks to Nolan Mascarenhas for audio editing assistance, Nelson Reed for production assistance, and to Nandini Kalani for assistance with show notes and transcript.

Guest Bio:

Priya Pookkulam is a member of Harvard Law School’s Class of 2025. Before law school, she worked as a paralegal for an anti-human trafficking organization in New Delhi, India and an environmental law firm in New York, NY. She loves to hike and travel and hopes to visit all of the national parks in the U.S.

Music:

Our theme music is “I Been Waiting” by Crystal Squad, and you’ll also hear segments of “Palms Down” by Blue Dot Sessions.

Related [F]law Resources: 

Additional Resources (regarding topics mentioned in podcast):

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Transcript 

 (This transcript was created by an automated process and contains errors.)

Flaw School – Episode 12; Season 1 – The Body (S)camera

with Priya Pookkulam, Shyun Moon, and Sam Perri

Jon Hanson: Hi everyone, this is Jon Hanson from the Systemic Justice Project and The Flaw Magazine at Harvard Law School. Police body cameras were supposed to bring accountability. They were supposed to be a check on power, a way to capture the truth. But in practice, they’ve become something else: a tool for law enforcement to control the narrative, a lucrative industry for private corporations, and yet another piece of a growing surveillance state. In this episode of [F]law School, hosts Shyun Moon and Sam Perri sit down with Priya Pookulam, a third-year law student, to explore the uneasy reality of body cameras. They trace how Axon—the company that dominates this industry—has turned calls for reform into a business model. They explore how footage is manipulated—blurred, cut, and reframed—to justify police violence rather than expose it. And they examine why, despite the proliferation of body cameras, police killings continue to rise. Are body cameras holding police accountable? Or are they simply reshaping public perception to legitimate the status quo? Welcome to Flaw School—the podcast about the flaws in the law.

Shyun Moon Hey, welcome to Flaw School, a podcast that explores the flaws in our legal system. I’m one of today’s hosts, Shyun Moon, and I’m a second year at Harvard College.

Sam Perri Hi, everyone, I’m Sam Perri and I’m a public defender, and I am the co -host of this episode. And we’re so excited to be hosting today’s episode of Flaw School.

Sam Perri Every two weeks, we interview law students to uncover the role of corporate actors in producing many of our most urgent social problems and the troubling tale of corporate actors shaping, bending, capturing, and breaking the law in their favor. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the intersection between police body camera footage, police brutality, and the surveillance state.

Shyun Moon Today we’re joined by Priya Pookulam, a third -year law student. Welcome to Floss School, Priya. Class is in session.

Sam Perri Priya, this is such a fascinating, disturbing, and interesting topic to me. What inspired you to write about it?

Priya Pookkulam Well, hi, Sam and Sean. Thank you for having me on. This topic was an extension of some work I did during an internship about tasers, actually. I knew that Axon was the company that produced tasers. And I got curious about what other stuff that they produced, saw that they did body camera work, and fell down a rabbit hole of looking at the responses to police brutality by. buying body cameras for police departments. And I just got really curious about whether or not they worked, whether or not they actually did what they were advertised to do and what the public thought about them overall. So from that came this article where I uncovered a lot more than I expected to.

Shyun Moon I want to take us a little deeper into your article, Priya. So you open this article with a sense of hope. After the murder of George Floyd, people were demanding justice. But in time, this momentum seemed to fizzle. Then in February, 2021, Davrian Kennard was murdered by a police officer. And there’s a screenshot in your article of the body cam footage of the murder, which you tell us was edited by the police and then shared with the public six months later. Could you talk us through the significance of that release and the call for transparency that followed?

Priya Pookkulam Sure. So some of the significance of this event was just that it was honestly routine at this point, which was disappointing given the protests we saw around the murder of George Floyd. Police departments routinely will edit body camera footage and release it as they did in this case with kind of a PowerPoint presentation accompanying it and police commentary attached to it that really changes the way that you view the footage. So the footage on its own kind of shows a rush chase and a horrific shooting that the police blur out and mute to kind of tone down some of the gore. And after this was released, Mr. Kinnard’s family asked the police department for more footage, for information about what really happened. They felt like justice was not done. And this is a story that happens over and over again. throughout the country with these kinds of encounters. And it shows the broader problem with body cameras, which is the idea is that they capture footage, which is supposed to be just pure information that doesn’t have an angle. But the problem is that information can then be edited. And if the police are controlling how it’s released, it doesn’t necessarily do what it’s supposed to do. As I mentioned in the article, the officer that shot Mr. Kennard was still on the force, as far as I could tell. I think it took some time off to recover from the incident, but there weren’t really any punishments. And as I mentioned later on in the article, this exposure of body camera footage through these edited releases and highly propagandized commentary, doesn’t really change anything. The number of police encounters that end in deaths with civilians has only increased over time.

Sam Perri I have a question, because I know in your article you mentioned different ways that they edit body camera footage. And I know with the release of the footage specific to Mr. Canard, like, yes, like blurred out parts, like muted parts. Another way is like body camera images and footage can be edited. That’s not so clearly like in your face, right? That it’s blurred out. And I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that too, because I do think it is relevant and kind of maybe would help people understand different ways it could be edited more than just like these blatant ways when it’s released because there are definitely more forms of editing.

Priya Pookkulam So the different types of editing that can occur, and I’m not a videography expert or anything, but the police can change the order in which you see the footage. They can change in selecting the footage from different police officers’ cameras and splicing it together, they can tell a story. Even if we take the underlying belief that video footage is never going to tell a lie because it’s just capturing what is objectively happening. the way that it is edited together can tell a completely different story. I referenced the New York Times article in my piece that shows that because of the way that cameras are worn on an officer’s chest, they can make encounters that are completely benign seem. incredibly dangerous. One of the examples in the article is like a police officer dancing and a suspect also dancing. And it looks like they are in a fight or in a chase. Like it seems like danger is happening. So that’s one way that the police can, you know, make it seem like force was justified because it was a very dangerous situation. In other instances, it’s just the order in which the events are presented. you know, like also just the low grain of the footage. These aren’t great cameras. In the specific video of Mr. Cunard, it is very hard to tell that he has nothing in his hands. It’s also hard to tell from that footage, you know, what he was feeling, what the officer was feeling, if it was actually a particularly dangerous situation. And on top of just the footage itself, the way the police, present it to the public with additional commentary. When you are primed to think a video is saying or showing something, that is what you kind of expect to see. And so your own biases will put a filter between you and the actual evidence. So there’s lots of different ways that police departments can change the story or create their own narrative through footage that we are kind of trained to believe. is going to be perfectly truthful.

Sam Perri That’s super helpful.

Sam Perri Um, and I also now want to talk like a little bit more specifically right about the company that is monopolizing the body camera market, right. Um, and that’s Axon. Um, so right, there’s these calls for justice, these demands for justice and police departments respond to these calls with the help of the Axon corporation, like, sure, we’ll record everything. And Axon’s like, sure, we’ll make an insane amount of money off of this. I know you spoke briefly about Axon and kind of how you were drawn to read up more about them from your experience and also from like looking into tasers, but I’m hoping you could tell us a little bit more about that company.

Priya Pookkulam Yeah, so Axon is a kind of technology and security company. It did start out manufacturing tasers. It was previously known as TASER International. It changed its name after the taser got a bunch of bad press for not actually being non -lethal. So in its initial version, Axon sold tasers. It identified them as a non -lethal way of stopping. dangerous encounters between police and civilians. And the company had this entire branding story around its existence and its product. The idea was to make both policing safer and interacting with police safer for communities. And as it kind of grew into a larger technology -based corporation, it kept that narrative going. And it seems with kind of no acknowledgement of the danger that tasers actually present. And as they started getting into the body camera market, also the lack of effects of body cameras on police brutality, really. And it does all of this with this really like perky kind of advertising scheme. It’s very optimistic. It’s very positive. It’s. Like we are friends to police departments, but we really wanna help you not hurt people. And like on its front page, it’s got this like updating number that talks about the number of lives that the Taser has saved. I looked through that link to try to see how they got that information. Very unclear, nowhere in that report that it linked was that number stated. So yeah, and it has all of these goals for itself. It has a moonshot program where it wants to end any deaths, any police killings. Unclear how exactly it’s working to do that. And its most recent venture now is kind of connecting the footage that comes out of body cameras and doorbell cameras and just normal CCTV surveillance. footage in shops and restaurants into creating this surveillance map that police departments can use as rapid crime response centers and tagging that with an AI company that they have acquired to sift through that data and see where crimes are happening. So it’s this very like eerie, in my opinion, it’s a very eerie like police state. developing company that is trying to hide itself in this guise of, you know, trying to protect people from police encounters without really digging in deeper to why these encounters tap in or. why what their products are really doing, as I mentioned, like tasers don’t have a great track record. They sometimes kill people because it’s not great to be electrically charged with thousands of volts of energy. So yeah, it’s a – It’s definitely, as I mentioned in the article, it’s a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Shyun Moon Yeah, definitely, and like you just said, Axon kind of presents itself as a champion of police accountability while simultaneously strengthening its ties with the government. And this ultimately allows Axon to profit from both public outrage and government investment. What do you think are the broader implications of this strategy and branding?

Priya Pookkulam So I think that for as long as Axon remains a primarily police security and technology company, its ability to spin police violence and police brutality into problems that can be solved with silver bullet solutions that are their products, it will just continue to make money. I can’t speak for the company obviously, but the problems with American policing are deep and very complicated and they can’t be solved with like a neat piece of tech or an AI that can go through lots of images and videos. But the problem is because it presents itself as such an easy solution and a, and it presents itself not as like a weapons manufacturer, even though it is, it will continue to be, you know, like the first person to call for improving these, improving in quotes, these police civilian encounters and to try to decrease the damage done by police departments to the communities they serve. So. What ends up happening is this just kind of endless cycle, I think, where we have a problem of police brutality. Axon says, here is a solution on a silver platter. The problem continues and Axon just says, well, you haven’t equipped enough police departments with body cameras or, oh, well, what you need is this AI system to really analyze this evidence better and then you can police better and you’re not wasting your time on people who aren’t actually committing crimes. or you need to buy more tasers, or this new version of a taser that is less lethal. And they keep raking in money and the problem doesn’t really get any better because it’s not even scratching the surface of. the roots of the issue itself.

Sam Perri I just wanna make clear what I think is bubbling under the surface and kind of get your thoughts on it. The rise of body camera footage is a tool being used to justify the brutal and murderous criminal legal system and the actors that serve it. It sort of ties to the concept of system justification. The system adapts in response to threats to its legitimacy. So people think the police and the criminal legal system are so twisted and just so hopeless. They’ve no trust in those institutions. they might just toss them to the curb and those institutions will keep adapting like you said right with new technologies oh we need to use artificial intelligence you know that will help us make better use of these technologies we need to arm more officers with body camera footage and then the truth will be shared with the world and it feels like in our conversation and in reading your article that you’d agree with this perspective but I know that know, as a public defender, a very specific view on body camera footage. And I’m curious if, you know, this perspective resonates with you or you feel like maybe just not so black and white, Sam, and there are some nuances to it.

Priya Pookkulam I’m pretty similarly of that bet as well. I think that you’re right. I think when there are general uprisings to the system, the system wants to survive because there are powerful people that benefit from it. And this particular threat to its legitimacy is the flavor of police are unreasonably hurting and killing people. And so I don’t have trust in them as an institution. And so the police say, well, we can show you what we’re actually facing out there. And then that way you have a perfect record of what happened because we’re wearing the cameras on our chests and. you can see for yourself what we’re dealing with and that our actions are completely legitimate. And yes, that child did look like a grownup and that toy gun did seem dangerous. And it’s this weird solution of like bringing you into their lives and putting you in their positions so you feel for them. And then you give the, you as in like the American people give the system legitimacy again because you think, you know, looking at this footage, Oh, this. was a hard choice or it makes sense that this police officer was scared and felt like they needed to respond to this. And you know, like I, as someone who is also not particularly, who’s like of a public defense bent, I’ve watched body camera footage that I have just been very confused by and like can’t keep track of what’s happening. And so it’s harder in those instances to really look the police directly in the eye and say what you did was ridiculous and you should not have done it. And that lens at legitimacy. And it’s all part of this kind of continuous cycle where people identify a problem, but it is so hard to mobilize a large enough group of people to teach them about a problem, to get them angry about a problem, to get them angry enough that they like call the representatives or go protest. And then when the system can just make these like minor changes and people say, well, it’s really hard to fix a problem overnight, at least they’re doing something, but the something that they’re doing is not necessarily. actually helpful, it’s just really well advertised and spun as helpful. So yeah, I definitely agree with the idea that this is just continued system justification.

Sam Perri And I also just like hearing you say all that and made me think too, right? Like this is idea of like the benefits of body camera footage also just like ignore some realities, right? Like if an officer doesn’t turn the footage on and nothing’s recorded and at least like, I mean. I get axon footage all the time and they have to press the button to turn it on. When it turns on, it rewinds 30 seconds back. So it’s kind of technically always running, but like it’s not recording unless you press the button. And so even like, I have a case right now where the officer says they see this traffic violation. but they don’t turn their camera on until after it. And so then they continue to drive past this car for a little bit and then pull them over. And unless this traffic violation actually did happen, right? This isn’t a legal stop. So, you know, this idea that we can just, oh, like this technology can get better and better, right? It’s like, well, this also is in part based on, what are the actors doing within how they’re using it? I also had another case recently where it’s like a serious case. And an officer is like making these hand gestures that I feel like this podcast is probably too PG for me to explain what it is. But kind of making light of the situation where you’re like, whoa, are we both recognizing what you’re here to like quote investigate and you’re just kind of like treating this as a little like fun gig for you? So I think this whole idea also of like, this can get better and better. It’s like, who are the people who are using it and how are they using it? So I just also wanted to, it just felt right to add in there.

Priya Pookkulam Yeah, I think that’s fair. A big part, a big issue with the whole, like, yes, we’re collecting this body camera footage is that, like, they collect it, but it kind of goes into the black hole of a police department. And then we see, the public sees what the police department wants the public to see. So it ignores a lot of this, frankly, crass to violent, illegal, horrifying behavior by police officers. And we only see the you know, the shiny or the relevant or, you know, the pieces that make you feel really poorly for these men and women who are theoretically putting their lives on the line to keep communities safe. And with as busy as everyone is, like no one has time to go digging for all of this or to put in the FOIA request. get like the full footage and even if they did request it they probably wouldn’t get it all of this stuff so it’s easy to keep um it’s easy to keep people complacent and quiet when you know everyone is living their own lives and they don’t really care about this until it happens to them and then suddenly you know what is one person going to do against an entire system

Shyun Moon I just want to shift gears just a little bit and go from kind of like edits to the video and the selective nature of how the body cam footages are edited to the biases that the perspective of the body cams itself can provide to the court and the jury. So in your article you mentioned the camera perspective bias where the angle, the level, perspective of the camera. tends to bias people. So if police are running, for example, it seems chaotic and stressful. It seems like the camera perspective bias would be difficult to attenuate, even if the misleading edits were prevented. Could you tell us a little bit more about this bias and whether anything is being done to mediate its effects?

Priya Pookkulam Sure, yeah. So camera perspective bias, as you mentioned, is just the idea that it kind of stems from the idea when you put yourself in someone else’s shoes or look through their eyes, you have a better understanding of what they’re going through. And this happens when you’re viewing camera footage from a particular person’s perspective. So as I mentioned earlier, there was that experiment that the New York Times did where body camera footage of a police officer made it seem like he was in this really intense encounter with a civilian where when you zoom out to a third -person camera that showed both the police officer and just the person he was interacting with they were both it was like a dance battle they were just dancing at each other so the when you place when you get footage from a camera that is placed on officers chests which is usually where it is One, the person. unless the officer is just really tall, like everyone seems so much larger in the footage. And so they seem more dangerous because you’re naturally kind of afraid of, you know, people that are larger than you. And because it’s on the chest and it’s not necessarily strapped on super tightly, it like bounces up and down as the officer moves. So normal innocuous movement, like walking seems more rushed and chaotic. And it also makes whatever the person is doing scarier too. And cameras don’t accurately capture our vision either. Like, you know, people talk about like the fish lens effect. It doesn’t have, you know, the properties that our brain does to collect information from multiple lenses and make the world look normal. So it. It basically, it tells a story through a perspective of like sitting on a police officer’s chest that is, frankly, it is scary. And as I mentioned, if you watch body camera footage, it’s like very hard to tell what’s happening. In terms of mediating its effects, I would struggle with answering this question or even offering any solutions, because I think the I don’t think its effects need to be mediated. I think we just need to kind of get rid of body cameras. Like I don’t think they do a great job. The one thing I could say about mediating is like basically what was mentioned in the Times article where if you get a third person perspective that captures fully the scene so you can see the edges of what’s happening. Instead of being super close up, you can see like a limb or two, and it seems bouncy and chaotic. If you’re looking from further away from a camera that seems more like it’s recording an unbiased version of the events, like that could be helpful to deal with the perspective issue. But honestly, that also means more surveillance. And I am not, to be clear, advocating for CCTV cameras on every light pole or building.

Sam Perri I, people can see this, but as we’re recording, I put up a reaction of like a clapping hands to what Priya was saying. I do like, I wanted to kind of throw out the naysayers perspective. And it also did make me think of some things that like, okay, yes, I can give it to body camera footage, right? Like if officers say one thing and I watch a body camera footage and it says something else, like I can like weaponize that for my client’s benefit, right? like I have a case where… a cop’s looking through his car and in the report, he says there’s aluminum foil in the car. And from my training and experience, which is in every single report, I know that’s used to ingest whatever drug they can come up with for that, right? And I watched the footage and there is a full slice of pizza in the foil. So you’re like, what? Like, did they really think that you weren’t gonna see the full, like, uneaten slice of pizza, right? So like, in that moment, I was like, hell yeah, I mean, does it like bust my case open? Absolutely not. But like, it still diminishes their credibility if they’re going to write a report that they say that they saw one thing and you see the opposite. Crazy. Love that. But there are also like are other things people will say that maybe like, I wouldn’t necessarily vibe with but I think a lot of people would probably say who don’t like you were saying, view body camera footage often, or see the effects it can have. Like they might say, you know, well, it can serve as like helpful evidence, right? Just like generally speaking, right? The more information we have is always the better. And people who are videoed, they can request the footage like you’re saying, right? And you know, what we collect in footage now might not be helpful now, but it could be helpful down the road. And like this other case, you know, now we have all this evidence and like, aren’t we glad that we just. just have more to look at, right? Like the more information people have, they can use it in various ways. And like, is it really worth giving up these benefits by reducing the use or just completely eliminating the use of body camera footage? Cause like nothing’s gonna be perfect. No technology is gonna be perfect. Like, isn’t it better to have more than less? Like, what would you say to that? I’m curious.

Priya Pookkulam A couple things. I think first, it’s a question that makes sense. I feel like we have this basic understanding that more information is better than less. But with the body cameras in particular, I would caution people to first look and see if, like, what benefits is it actually providing? Who does it actually help? What do the kind of numbers and studies about its use done by neutral parties, not axon funded. scientists, like, what do they actually show? And, you know, we have seen that police, police killings have not declined. We are, more people are being killed by the police every year. That is not changing. So body cameras aren’t changing that. And it’s also, body camera footage is also often used by prosecutors much more than defense lawyers. And on that front, maybe someone has a different bent than I do and they think that’s fine. But, and this is the second point, we have to ask ourselves what we’re willing to accept in terms of being surveilled by the state. I think every question about safety and dealing with crime, it all comes with a trade off, right? Like if you want to be safe, you have to, or at least the government is telling us, if you want to be safe, you have to give up some of your rights for that safety. If you’re called into court, you have to go to court. You have to help the system help you. But we’re also, you know, the point of a democracy is that we’re sovereign citizens and we can decide how much of our life we want the government to be involved in. And so the broader question is, is this 24 -7 surveillance, which hasn’t really helped the problem that we have installed it to deal with. that worth whatever safety it’s supposed to be providing and is it really providing any of that safety? Like I don’t think I feel particularly safer because, you know, if a cop that pulled me over happens to have a body camera on their chest versus not. So, yeah, I think… that question, you have to answer the deeper question of like, how much knowledge does the state really deserve to have? Or how much information does the state really deserve to have? And then after that, like, what, does it really help? And I think, I mean, I’m a private person. I think the state doesn’t deserve to have that much information about me. And separately from that, we have data that shows it doesn’t help. It’s not doing what we want it to do. And I don’t think prosecutors really need help getting more people in jail.

Sam Perri I also just found myself thinking of this too, right, is like, I feel like a huge thing that, you know, if we’re thinking about. the idea that people should have as much information related to an investigation or a police interaction as possible, then why are we so freaked out by civilians pulling out their phone to start recording? Why is that seen as a threat to police officers for there to be a video from their perspective? Because if we’re actually thinking about having the most information and level playing field, you want both sides, right? And I think you’re right that body camera footage is often used more by prosecutors. I mean. I would say for me, it’s probably more for like impeachment stuff, but like they have the burden of proof. Like I don’t have the burden of proof. So if they know less generally, like all the better. But I do think then, you know, if we’re going to say that the state has a right to have, you know, all this video footage being captured all the time, then like, why is it an issue when civilians do the same thing? Because they feel like officers are often like, oh, like put your phone away, like you’re coming closer to me. It’s like, I’m just lifting this up. I’m just recording this interaction. just like you are, and I don’t trust that you’re going to give me what you’ve recorded, and maybe if you do not in a timely fashion, right?

Priya Pookkulam Yeah, I think that’s fair. I mean, I think having little cameras that we can carry with us everywhere is a great way for people to be able to, you know, counteract police stories. And also you see, when comparing cell phone footage with body cam footage, it makes it so, like the different perspective makes it so clear that what’s happening is not as urgent or anything as the police put it out to be, but it is so hard to counter. video evidence without video evidence of your own. For the law students in the room, there’s the famous, I think it’s Scott B. Harris, that the Supreme Court said that… you know, it’s obvious what happened here. We have a video of it. There is no other argument that you could make. Like no reasonable person would think otherwise, which was very funny in that opinion because there was a descent of like, I can’t remember if it was three or four justices, but they clearly thought otherwise. So yeah, it’s this video seemed just so unimpeachable. It seems like they show exactly what happened. They give more information than just a single photograph. But as we talked about earlier, A video can mean a lot of things and can prove a lot of things from different perspectives.

Shyun Moon Yeah my next question is actually almost directly in line with what you just said about the reality behind videos but some people might be skeptical that the courts will actually allow these edited body camera footage as evidence and I just want to ask what you would say to that.

Priya Pookkulam Well, I will say as a law student, I don’t really have a lot of experience with this. So I think, Sam, as a practicing attorney, you might have a better answer to this question.

Sam Perri hearing myself being called that feels gross. I just wanna name that. Yeah, no, I mean, I definitely do have a lot of thoughts on this and I think it raises questions about just like what is considered evidence generally, right? Like evidence sounds so like objectively, like it sounds like objective speak and it’s really not. Like I think a good example of kind of where I see is like, yeah, I mean, it’s edited. You might not say it’s edited, but it’s edited It wasn’t body camera footage, but like… kind of um this case where some like guy had like a dash camera running in his car which like don’t get me started of like what I think of a person who has that in their car um that can be an offline conversation but um had this dash camera running and it ends up providing the only video evidence for this case and it’s also a very dumb case which I’m also happy to talk about uh offline but also like just basically involves like a brick being put on someone’s car anyways um and the person who captured this video footage was a friend to the quote alleged victim right um and so this video is like maybe two minutes long and you’re like i wonder what happened before and after this right And I knew that there was definitely something that happened before that. Would it have been a legal defense? No. However, it is relevant to the story, right? If we’re trying to tell a story about what happened that day. And it kind of feels the same thing of like, you could say the same thing for dash camera, body camera footage of like, it’s only this snippet, right? They’re not gonna be like, here is the last day worth of body camera footage from this specific camera. they’re not going to do that. They’re not going to send that to you. Also, I wouldn’t want to watch all of it to be honest, but still they’re not going to send it to you. And so I think just in essence because they’re clips, like they are edited right off the bat. And, you know, we argue that in the case I was talking about before that the dash camera, like, should not be admitted. What ruling you’re going to get if you’re arguing that in front of a judge is going to be in part depending on who your judge is. if they’re willing to actually take a stand and say like, no, the state, like, you cannot admit that because, you know, there is some concerns about X, Y, Z, because the judge is probably thinking, what are the broader implications of me making this sort of decision on other cases, or how am I gonna be viewed by the state, or X, Y, Z? And so, I mean, I do think that all body camera footage is inherently edited. I think like videos are inherently edited. I think it comes down to the perspective. I think photos, I mean like people are gonna say you’re going like I’m going down a rabbit hole but like it’s coming from a specific perspective it’s not objective and to me then it kind of aligns with it being edited um so I do think that I mean there’s even arguments and trials about, like… at what point should we start the video clip and introducing it to a jury? Like at what point should we start it? And that makes a huge difference, right? If it’s a conversation or an interview with someone that’s being recorded and shown to the jury, like how much they see before, how much context they have to the conversation is so important. And it like totally changes your perspective of what you would think of, what the person has to say, the interviewer, the whole nine yards. So my answer is, everything’s edited, which probably people are not going to like that, but I do think it’s true if we kind of think critically about, you know, what is coming in, who is the person presenting what’s coming in, what are their biases, and who are the court actors who are, you know, have to make decisions about those sorts of things.

Priya Pookkulam Yeah, I think it’s just as a broader, I guess, comment to this too is I think a lot of people might think the law is a very objective field or like criminal trials are very objective, but so much of like, everything is shades of gray, so much of it is subjective. Like, there’s this joke that, you know, how a judge will rule depends on what they had for breakfast this morning. Like, there’s a million ways for… attorneys to manipulate different types of evidence that don’t involve actually changing, you know, like photoshopping anything into the evidence. It’s like, it’s all about how a lawyer presents it and how they have other people talk about it and how they talk about it to a jury or a judge. So it’s, and video evidence especially, I think is a very dangerous tool in that tool set.

Shyun Moon Yeah, thank you Sam and Priya both for answering this question, but also this lack of objectivity in the law and also how body cam footage can be manipulated. I think some of our listeners are now wondering how they can participate in the call to arms against body cameras. So do you have any suggestions for where they can go to learn more?

Priya Pookkulam I feel like this has been kind of a depressing episode. I would say the first thing I always like to do when I learn something that outrages me is try to get more information. And I think there’s a lot of really good resources online about, you know, do body cameras work, actually, and what do kind of like civil rights groups and anti -surveillance. groups think about this. And in terms of the call to arms against body cameras, this is gonna sound like a tired line, but I think if your town or community is thinking about outfitting your police department with body cameras or updating them or honestly outfitting just the streets with more cameras, I think there’s this general understanding in. kind of the world of police reform that reforms, and I’m using air quotes right now, that put more money in the pockets of police are generally not doing anything for you. They’re simply helping the state. police you more effectively, and effectively is not necessarily a good thing. So, I think that the, the thing to do is, like, talk to your, you know, your local governments, if it seems like it’s something that Congress is dealing with at the moment, talk to your call your Congress person, write them a letter, like, try to get involved in local government. And if you’re in some of the bigger metropolitan areas, I think there’s generally groups that. that work on this, so searching like anti -surveillance or I know someone I talked to work for the stop LAPD spying coalition. So there are, there are groups like that that, you know, maybe they could use volunteers. Maybe they could use support. I’m sure they could always use money. So yeah, things like that could be, could be a way to participate. Another great resource that people might want to check out to learn more about Police Propaganda is a book called Copaganda by Alec Karakatsanis.

Sam Perri Okay, yeah, I definitely think that courts do allow edited body camera footage in its evidence. I mean, I will just say more broadly, I think that anything that is evidence, whether it’s like photos, or videos, honestly, I can go beyond that, but I’ll keep it limited to that I do think that they’re edited just by the nature of like they’re taking on a specific perspective and they’re like, coming from a specific point of view, but I guess I would think about this in a couple of ways. So I had a case where there was video footage. It was dash camera footage, which is pretty similar to body camera footage. A lot of officers who are wearing body camera footage have in their cruiser dash camera footage. And the video is about two minutes and it was the only video that we had of this alleged crime. And it was actually not even coming from a cop car or it was coming from a civilian’s car. and that civilian was friends with the alleged victim. And we litigated the issue of whether the footage should be admissible on the grounds that it really is biased. It’s a two minute clip that was taken out of this running, constantly running dash cam footage. And that’s edited, right? It’s like chopped up to the specific portion that was chosen by the civilian who submitted it to the police. They didn’t submit the whole night’s footage. They just submitted the two minutes. And so the state would argue that that, and they did argue that it wasn’t edited, right? Like this is just what we received. But in reality, it is edited, right? Like it’s chopped at a certain point that even, you know, goes for body camera footage that is of an interview or a conversation with someone who’s a witness, whether they’re the complaining witness or just a witness to a case, right? Like what’s going to be admitted to court is not gonna be the full entire conversation. majority of the time because it would just be too long and courts are also concerned about efficiency and don’t want to keep people there all day. And so the context of the video footage you’re getting is you know artificial right in the sense that they’re only going to be admitting a snippet of the footage and how much you get out of that snippet will really inform the jurors about what they think about the case. So I think, you know, if we’re thinking in the sense of like, are courts going to allow video footage that is like blurred? Um, I mean, I think it’s a little bit tougher for this state to try to argue that they can blur the footage if like, if they were to try to emit footage that was like, zoomed in after the fact, I think that’s also a problem in the sense that like, someone’s supposed to testify that the footage is like an accurate representation, and the the camera was like working as normal and that there are no glitches with it. Um, and so if like a footage is skipping, that’s an issue, right? Like, how can you say that it’s working in normal order? Um, but you know, beyond those kind of, I’m going to say more extreme instances where you’d say like that clearly looks edited or clearly looks messed up, I think a lot of video footage is just inherently biased and edited, um, because you’re not going to admit everything. um so people might not think of it as being edited when they’re seeing these snippets but it is edited and the state has a burden of proof so they are going to be probably the people who are introducing the footage maybe the defense is introducing footage to impeach a witness or they’re just introducing themselves but it’s really that’s a defense right like it’s not the burden so i do think that courts will definitely allow it edited it just depends on how you define what is edited But in my point of view, it is edited.

Shyun Moon That’s a lot of great advice for our listeners. And that’s all we have time for today. Priya, thank you so much for joining us on Floss School. We’re happy to talk body cameras with you any day.

Priya Pookkulam Thanks so much for having me!

Sam Perri And I also want to thank you both for such a wonderful conversation. Um, I could, I think it’s clear by this episode that I could talk about this a lot and I have a lot of opinions on things, but it’s really great to kind of get both of your perspectives and just kind of like chat about how messed up the system is. And, and especially in this respect.

Sam Perri Yeah, and thank you, Sam, for being such a great co -host. Oh my gosh, stop, thank you.

Sam Perri If you’re interested in reading Priya’s full article or learning more about the flaws in our legal system, check out the Flaw Magazine at theflaw.org.

Shyun Moon If you enjoyed this episode, first make sure to check out the show notes. There’ll be some awesome links and references there. And make sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also check out flawschool .org for more content. Thank you all for listening and looking forward to talking at you in the future. Class is dismissed.

Priya Pookkulam

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