[Scan-DC] All 3 articles mention "police scanners"

[Alan Henney]

The Washington Post

July 8, 2016 Friday  
Met 2 Edition

WorldStar one of first homes for videos of street fights and police brutality

BYLINE: Drew Harwell

SECTION: A-SECTION; Pg. A15

LENGTH: 984 words

Long before Facebook and YouTube shared the horrific videos of the fatal police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, few websites shared the visceral truth of police brutality quite like WorldStarHipHop.

A controversial aggregator of often-shocking videos, the site gained infamy for reveling in shaky, smartphone-captured street fights. But it was also one of the first homes for uncensored, user-submitted videos from a mostly young, black audience, angry and eager to share their often-overlooked tensions with police. Its founder, Lee O'Denat, once mimicked a line rapper Chuck D used to describe hip-hop by calling his site "the CNN of the ghetto."

The videos of this week's shootings of Sterling and Castile, two young black fathers killed in Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights, Minn., are startling for their unflinching intimacy: Castile's last moments were captured by his girlfriend, Diamond "Lavish" Reynolds, who sat inches away but broadcast them live on Facebook to a global audience. 

"Everybody who shared that video, [the police] don't want you guys to be a part of this," Reynolds said later. "I wanted to put it on Facebook to go viral, so that the people could see."

But the wrenching scenes these videos capture are, for the black community, nothing new. Only now, as the videos have grown beyond sites such as WorldStar to fill the Internet, has the visual horror of their violence become available to a mainstream audience - and that much harder to ignore.

"Nothing caught on camera can be denied. It's right there in front of you - and you can't question it," said O'Denat, a Queens native known as "Q," in a 2014 interview. "This country has become so obsessed with trying to deliver everything wrapped up in a nice blanket like we're in a wonderland, and we show everyone that is not the case."

WorldStar is now just one of many sites where videos of police violence are posted, seen and shared, and it has largely been overtaken in popularity by rival video platforms including YouTube, Twitter and live-streaming service Periscope. Still, it remains a window into a nationwide agony: One graphic video of Sterling's killing in Baton Rouge has been viewed on the site more than half a million times.

Nearly 25 years after the caught-on-camera police beating of Rodney King, videos of brutality against blacks remain key evidence in the fight for police reform. But their proliferation, from Facebook Live to New York newsstands, has also been criticized for helping spread disturbing images that fewer Americans can choose to avoid.

"What sort of toll does this constant loop of black violent death take on people who see themselves in those images? And how might this be contributing to the dehumanization of blacks in the eyes of others, as opposed to making us look more human?" said Jamilah Lemieux, a senior editor at Ebony magazine. "What happens when you get used to seeing black men shot down? Do you lose your sympathy or get spurred to action, or do you get desensitized to it, numb to it?"

The modern ubiquity of cameras and smartphones, and the increasing adoption of body-worn cameras for police, have made commonplace the videos of young black men dying at the hands of police, including the images of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice. Through June 30, at least 105 fatal police shootings have been captured on video, according to an ongoing Washington Post database of police use of deadly force.

Video's ability to capture what happened during encounters with police has also become a critical tool for those seeking to capture abuse by police. The first public video of the Baton Rouge shooting came from a team of anti-violence activists, who make it their mission to listen to police scanners and rush to videotape potentially chaotic scenes.

But in 2005, when O'Denat launched WorldStar in his house to help sell rap mix tapes, the availability of the videos online was still a rarity. Many rival video sites aimed for wider audiences and blocked the uncensored material of WorldStar.

The site's viewers binged on videos of freestyle rap competitions, silly pranks, sports highlights and ugly brawls. On camera, onlookers could often be heard shouting "WorldStar!" to signify where the video would land soon after the last punch hit.

But the site also revealed a deeply intimate perspective on the boiling-over tension between police and the black community, including through cruiser dashboard-camera footage, clips of violent arrests and other policebrutality videos that would otherwise go unnoticed on TV news. After the police beating of a drug suspect in the Bronx was posted - "These Cops In The Bronx, NY Are Out Of Control!" the WorldStar headline said - four New York officers were stripped of their guns and badges.

The historical documenting of violence against blacks extends far before video. Photographs of lynchings in the Deep South became touchstones for the civil rights movement and conveyed the savagery in a way few words ever could. O'Denat, who did not respond to messages Thursday, seemed to tap into that when he posted a quote to Instagram saying, "The violence is not new, it's the cameras that are new."

WorldStar remains a launchpad for videos in sync with community unrest: Its top trending video Thursday morning was a clip of radio host Peter Rosenberg excoriating the police for not criticizing fellow officers. But Christopher Sebastian Parker, a political science professor at the University of Washington who has written on social justice, worries that the recording of such violence has done too little to prevent it from happening again.

"White people are more aware of it, but nothing is changing," Parker said. "For you guys, Mr. Policeman is pulling your cat out of the tree. For us, he's sweating us every chance he gets. . . . If at the end of the day nothing changes, then what can we attach to that?"

drew.harwell at washpost.com




The Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana)

July 7, 2016 Thursday  
Main Edition

Videos testify to details ofl shooting

BYLINE: DAVID MITCHELL AND MAYA LAU; dmitchell at theadvocate.com mlau at theadvocate.com; 

SECTION: A; Pg. 09

LENGTH: 713 words

In the end, Alton Sterling lay nearly spread-eagle on the pavement outside the Triple S Food Mart early Tuesday, a wide bloodstain on the front of his red shirt as a police officer called on his radio, "Shots fired. Shots fired," then shouted an expletive.

Moments before, Sterling, pinned to the ground, had been struggling with two Baton Rouge police officers on top of him. 

Then at least six shots rang out.

The scene was captured in the second cellphone video to emerge of the shooting of Sterling, a 37-year-old man who sold compact discs in front of the Triple S Food Mart. The video, released Wednesday, a day after the first one was widely disseminated, adds snippets of context to the moments before and immediately after Sterling was shot.

Joel Porter, the lawyer for Triple S owner Abdullah Muflahi, said his client shot the second video. Muflahi didn't turn it over to the Baton Rouge Police Department because he doesn't trust the agency, Porter said, adding that the video has been given to the FBI.

We feel the truth needs to come out. The community needs to be aware of what actually happened. Mr. Muflahi feels that justice should be done in this case," Porter said.

State and federal officials announced Wednesday that the FBI and federal prosecutors were taking the lead in the Sterling investigation.

Porter also claimed more videos and witness accounts of the shooting have not yet been made public. He warned they will serve as a check on what local authorities tell the community about the shooting.

"There is additional footage and additional witnesses that they know not of. We'll let Baton Rouge city police create a narrative, and then we will knock it down inch by inch," Porter said.

Officers showed up about 12:35 a.m. Tuesday at the Triple S Food Mart on North Foster Drive after an anonymous caller reported a man in a red shirt selling CDs outside the store had ordered someone off the property at gunpoint, police have said.

Muflahi has told The Advocate that Sterling was armed but was not holding his gun or touching his pockets during the incident. Muflahi said police pulled a gun from Sterling's pocket after the shooting. Initial results of an autopsy performed Tuesday show Sterling died from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back.

Neither the first nor second video provides a clear shot of Sterling's hands, but an officer can be seen struggling with the man's right arm before the shooting. After the shooting, an officer can be seen taking something from Sterling's right pants pocket.

The first video, publicized Tuesday, shows two officers confronting Sterling then wrestling him to the ground. The camera lens turns away after the first shots.

The second video, shot from a different angle than the first, starts after Sterling is brought to the ground in front of a parked sedan and shows more of what happened after he was shot. At first, a prone Sterling can be seen picking his head up as officers kneel over and appear to struggle with him.

Shots are heard as the camera's lens turns away, then returns to show an officer on his side with a pistol pointed at Sterling's prone body.

"What you did that for, man," someone is heard shouting.

Sterling raises his left arm as the officer gets up. It's not clear from the video which officer fired the shots.

Neither video shows the events leading up to the officers' takedown of Sterling. Baton Rouge police have provided few details. Muflahi has described the officers as aggressive.

Arthur "Silky Slim" Reed said the first video was shot by Stop the Killing Inc., a group he founded. He would not identify specifically who shot the first video but said his group routinely tracks shootings in Baton Rouge for documentary work.

He said his crew was able to be at the scene of the shooting because they routinely track violence by listening to police scanner traffic and tapping his sources in the city.

He said his group is trying to raise awareness of violence in the black community among young people, whether it is by the police or is black-on-black crime.

"Black lives will never matter if they don't matter to black people first. We put it in their face and show them what they're doing to each other, and if police are doing something, we want to hold them accountable too," Reed said.




NPR All Things Considered

July 7, 2016 Thursday

SHOW: All Things Considered 08:00 PM EST

Activists Use Video To Document Police Violence

GUESTS: Arthur Reed

LENGTH: 810 words

ARI SHAPIRO: One big reason Alton Sterling's death became national news was a cell phone video and a warning that even the audio is a bit disturbing. It captured police officers struggling with, then shooting Sterling. 

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: He's got a gun. Gun.  

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: (Unintelligible). 

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: (Unintelligible). 

(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOT) 

ARI SHAPIRO: That video was filmed by a Baton Rouge activist group called Stop the Killing, Inc. The group's founder is Arthur Reed, who goes by Silky Slim, and he joins us now. How did your group get involved with the Alton Sterling shooting? 

ARTHUR REED: Basically, we gather video of violent footage all the time, and we listen to scanners every single day to find out where these violent acts are taking place. And when we listen to these scanners, when we hear certain codes, we will go to that location. We will go to the address that we hear on the scanners. However, with this particular video, we're not sure if they actually heard the call. We just know that the video was captured, and when it was turned over to me, I knew the importance of that video. 

ARI SHAPIRO: Tell me why you decided not to release the video immediately after you obtained it. 

ARTHUR REED: We wanted to give the police department and the city a chance to be transparent with what was going on. Immediately after the killing, the police officers put the owner of the store in the back of a police car, confiscated his hard drive, took his cell phone and basically placed him under arrest for no charges. We wanted to see if they were going to release the store video. We wanted to see how transparent it was going to be. 

So they're saying, well, we have video. We have body cameras. We have everything that we need to do a thorough investigation. Then the next day, they come out and say, well, the body cameras fell off the officers, so we don't have that video. And then they didn't produce to store surveillance footage, so that let us know that we needed to release what we had nationally. And that's why we used social media through several outlets to make sure that we get this thing up and running. 

ARI SHAPIRO: And, of course, after this incident in Baton Rouge, we've seen another killing in Minnesota. What do you make of the scenario there, where the incident was live-streamed on Facebook? 

ARTHUR REED: I think that was very smart of her to live-stream it. That way, if they would have told her to stop recording, it wouldn't have been one of those days where they could have just made her shut her phone off. It was already being recorded. I think that's a very, very sad incident right there, but the focus has been turned to what has taken place there. And this is - Alton is definitely yesterday's news because something new has happened now. And that shows you how fast these incidents are happening. 

We were praying and hoping that nothing would happen and that this wouldn't happen again in our country, but unfortunately less than 24 hours - when we were receiving the attention that we feel that this case should get, it's turned somewhere else. And I'm afraid to go to sleep tonight 'cause I'm thinking that we're going to hear something tomorrow. I mean, this is saddening. 

ARI SHAPIRO: Obviously, technology has really become a powerful tool in these scenarios. What kinds of guidance do you offer people around the country about how best to use the technology at their disposal? 

ARTHUR REED: Film what you're filming, understand what you're filming, and don't over talk yourself on what you're filming. If you have to talk while you film, make sure that you use clean language so that this can be material that can be used for the media. This is important right now in this time. You have to thank God for iPhones, Samsung and all of the many brands that have offered us this type of technology. You have to thank God for social media. 

These stories are not new stories to the urban community. We've been saying that police are killing people and covering it up. But there's that other side of society that hasn't ever seen anything like this and will be quick to say, oh, man, no police officer is going to just kill you. These people are crazy. But now that we have footage, and we have video, we're showing you exactly what's going on and how it has been going on for so long. Right now, we just have a way of exposing it. And the sad part about it is that even though we are getting the video and we're getting the actual killings, there's still no accountability for what has taken place. 

ARI SHAPIRO: That was Arthur Reed, a.k.a. Silky Slim. His Baton Rouge activist group is called Stop the Killing, Inc. They film police encounters, including the one this week that ended with Alton Sterling's death.