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After Eric Garner Grand Jury Decision, Activist and WITNESS Founder Urges the Nation Not to Give Up On Video Evidence Just Yet

Following the death of Staten Island father Eric Garner and the lack of an indictment against the New York police officer who placed him in a chokehold, there was widespread doubt that video evidence would be effective in the push for justice.

The Black community wasn’t sure if police body cameras would bring about change and families were still worried that one day it would be their own loved one on camera uttering that they couldn’t breathe and their killer would still be a free man.

But is video evidence useless in the fight against police brutality or is there just a need for a better way to collect, store and verify the video evidence?

According to Peter Gabriel, an activist and co-founder of the human rights organization WITNESS, video evidence still has a shot at protecting citizens from abusive police officers.

“We live in an age of video,” Gabriel wrote on Wired. “As more and more of our lives are being filmed, we are amassing massive catalogs of potential evidence. Yet so little of this is finding its way into our political, legal or justice system.”

Instead of shedding a spotlight on video evidence, prosecutors are still focusing on unreliable eyewitnesses and conflicting reports.

This is opening the door for “unreliable” and “re-imagined” stories to come in the way of justice.

Gabriel believes that a few changes to the way we deal with video evidence could really make a difference in the court of law.

“Technology already exists that can aid us in proving a piece of video is authentic (hasn’t been tampered with, manipulated or edited in any way) or even prove the unique ‘signature’ of the person who filmed it,” he explained. “If that is possible, why would a prosecutor need to present evidence to a grand jury to ask for an indictment where technology has presented irrefutable, visual evidence of a possible crime?”

Prosecutors have been at the center of the discussion when it comes to the lack of indictments against police officers who have killed unarmed Black men.

Prosecutors often share close relationships with police officers and present cases in a way that will better the officer’s chances of getting off.

By incorporating reliable, verified video evidence in the courtrooms, however, Gabriel argues that prosecutors won’t be necessary in cases where a verified video shows clear police brutality.

The jurors would be shown a “proof mode” video that would allow journalists, investigators and other audiences to make sure the video is “authentic.”

“The proof mode would be accessed through a specific app, an option on a device or a media-sharing platform such as YouTube,” he added. “It would incorporate and preserve important metadata such as the location and time and date of a video file’s creation. This additional information would ensure a file’s integrity.”

In addition to making such videos easier to locate, Gabriel believes it will give more weight to video evidence and help create a “cohesive story of an incident” rather than the often unclear, contradicting stories that many grand juries are presented.

Of course, with cases like Eric Garner, Gabriel understands video evidence still won’t be foolproof.

“People old enough to remember will recall that the video of the Rodney King beating failed to convince a jury of any guilt of the LAPD officers involved in the ensuing criminal case,” he said, but he believes this isn’t a sign that video evidence doesn’t work.

Instead, he said it’s a sign that issues like police brutality are deeper than conflicting eyewitness reports.

“This is not a failure of video, but a reminder that for issues like police brutality, which have deep systemic roots, and touch inbuilt prejudices, the struggle to end it will not come quickly,” he said.

Video evidence certainly won’t bring justice on its own, but, according to Gabriel, it will be able to empower “billions of potential witnesses” and make it impossible for the system to “ignore the foundation of real justice.”

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Could IBM’s Watson Get to the Bottom of the Issues in Ferguson?

IBM’s “cognitive supercomputer” is starting to get involved in law enforcement, and now there is speculation that the data-crunching device could get to the bottom of issues with law enforcements in Ferguson, Missouri, and other Black communities across the nation.

IBM’s supercomputer, better known as Watson, garnered a lot of attention after it soared to victory on the Jeopardy game show more than three years ago.

Since then, the computer has been used in matters pertaining to food science, customer service and helping veterans prepare for life after the military.

Now, authorities are hoping Watson can get more involved with police investigations like the shooting of Michael Brown, the unarmed teen who was fatally shot Aug. 9 by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

Police investigations very quickly lead to thousands upon thousands of pages of reports, statements and lab results that investigators have to sort through.

While this can be a lengthy process for a human and leave tons of room for someone to miss a connection, Watson has the potential to complete years of work in a matter of seconds.

“There may be something in lead No. 25 that doesn’t make sense until you get to lead No. 2,050,” Tucson, Arizona, chief of police Roberto Villasenor told Mashable.com “How is a human going to tie those things together? Cognitive computing can.”

While authorities hope to get Watson involved in their investigations, Villasenor made it clear that humans will still need to be very involved in checking out leads and checking Watson’s results.

“It cannot be a computer or a human analysis,” he said. “It has to be an ‘and.’ We say, ‘Watson said this – let’s go check it out.’ ”

The analytical power behind the supercomputer could allow it to get a deeper understanding of issues with police that are currently being debated in situations like Ferguson.

Many influential figures are launching national discussions to try to figure out how to solve law enforcement issues in urban communities that are leading to Black men being killed and aggressive police tactics being used.

This is where Villasenor believes Watson could help sort through the chaos in Ferguson.

“There are a lot of theories being thrown out in the news media,” he said. “Being able to trudge through all the information and data, and put out accurate information, as opposed to speculation or analysis based on speculation and supposed truth that’s being put out through third-party hearsay … You need to filter through that.”

As Mashable writer Pete Pachal pointed out, it isn’t fair to say that all the comments regarding Ferguson have been “third-party hearsay.”

“Most of the commentators on Ferguson cite some statistics or studies to support their point of view,” Pachal wrote.

The difference, however, is that Watson would be able to digest more relevant data, link relevant information and sort through more files than humans can alone.

With the issue of police militarization being prominent in the media, Watson can sort through all the records that reveal what type of equipment was sold to which police agencies and departments and how this equipment has been used so far.

By analyzing this information, Watson can clearly identify if different, more aggressive tactics are being used more often in Black, urban communities.

“There are mounds of information out there that we’re going to need help sorting through to help us not necessarily answer the question, but at least define the problem,” Villasenor added. “We need to get the data-driven information, and not go with anecdotal information because there’s a lot of emotion behind it. We need to try and get past the emotion and find the truth. It may be bad, but we need to find out what it is so we can adjust.”