ANALYSIS/OPINION:
This is what can happen when expectations are at a feverish pitch.
The attorneys representing the family of dead D.C. motorcyclist Terrence Sterling stood before cameras Thursday and told us that the body-camera footage released just a day before does not tell the entire story.
Of course it does not. Neither the public nor the media should have expected that it would.
The Sterling shooting at the hands of Metropolitan Police Officer Brian Trainer is questionable following the release of the video because officials said Sterling had rammed his bike into Officer Trainer’s patrol car, because it’s not yet known why police pursued Sterling, and because it’s not yet known why the body-camera footage that was released only shows an officer administering CPR to Sterling after he was shot.
The video released so far is unlike, for example, that released Wednesday by a Louisiana judge. In that footage, officers are seen and heard shooting into a vehicle reportedly involved in a domestic dispute. A 6-year-old boy was fatally shot.
SEE ALSO: More body-camera footage shows aftermath of fatal shooting by D.C. police, attorneys say
In fact, two officers face second-degree murder charges in that boy’s death. The officers claim they were serving a warrant and the driver was using his vehicle in a threatening manner. Note however: there was no warrant, the “suspect” had stopped his vehicle and his hands were raised when officers began firing upon his vehicle.
The superintendent of Louisiana State Police, Michael Edmondson, characterized the video as “the most disturbing thing I’ve seen.” The video, you see, also reveals the moment when officers realized they had fired upon and killed the boy. The officers wept.
For sure, that circumstances are disturbing: Seemingly in pursuit of a nonthreatening motorist, law enforcers kill a nonthreatening passenger, a boy, in a hail of gunfire and concoct a lie about why they pursued the motorist.
The video footage released in the killing of Sterling can easily be construed as not of whole cloth, even though an officer is seen performing CPR.
What’s missing? The public and the media do not know.
What we do know is that Sterling was shot in the neck and the back, that his death has been ruled a homicide and that the officer who shot Sterling is named Brian Trainer, a four-year veteran.
At this juncture, it’s time to recall that the push for police body-warn cameras became a mighty sword against police brutality following the Ferguson, Missouri, death of Michael Brown in August 2014. President Obama found funding for the cameras as part of his community policing agenda, and the frenzy was on to crack the federal piggy bank.
The Sept. 11 killing of Sterling opens wide cracks in the city’s body-camera policies, as well.
Ferguson was a nasty turn events, for sure. The red-hot pushes to change policing mustn’t be made in the heat of such moments because those changes can too easily lead to misunderstandings.
Indeed, a fitting adage can be applied to both the Sterling case and the Louisiana case: Haste makes waste.
Post-Ferguson, the expectation was that police body-warn cameras would reveal the facts and the details. Yet, we knew before Mr. Obama found the funding for the initiative in 2014 that that wasn’t the truth.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth remains hidden in the Sterling case — and sometimes our eyes are deliberately misdirected.
• Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
• Deborah Simmons can be reached at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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