Not for the police to decide; city council needs to act

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record is right about video footage captured by the cameras now worn by all Greensboro police officers and for which police policy dictates that every interaction with a citizen is to be recorded: They are the people's property, not the police's.

First, to state the obvious: Based on what police are willing to tell us so far (which isn’t much), the Aug. 4 arrests of two Greensboro men seems petty and excessive.

Less than a block from his home, Rufus Scales, 27, was pinned to the ground and handcuffed for resisting arrest, walking in the middle of a street and “impeding traffic” where there seemed to be none.

Scales’ brother Devin, 22, captured a portion of the incident on camcorder footage that has been posted on the Internet. He pans the camera to show streets with no sidewalks or traffic, then two more police cars arriving.

The camera shakes as a hand suddenly appears in front of the lens and the filming suddenly stops. The officer, T.B. Cole, appears to confirm while on camera why he is arresting Scales: “You cannot just sit there and run your mouth and start cursing in the middle of the street.”

The incident has been seized by police critics as evidence of the mistreatment of some citizens, especially African Americans. It also adds another arrow to the quiver of the mounting argument against the Greensboro Police Department’s insistence on keeping footage shot by officers’ cameras shielded from public view as “a personnel record.”

In a meeting last week with News & Record editors and reporters, Police Chief Ken Miller, interim Chief Anita Holder and the interim city attorney, Tom Carruthers, stood by that interpretation, arguing that to do otherwise would be to break state law. But the footage’s value as a public record should hold greater weight. After all, these are taxpayer-funded recordings of officers’ interaction with the public in public places. Also, we’re talking about a tool that was advertised as a chance to build community trust in police and improve accountability. The city accomplishes neither by keeping such a stubborn grip on the footage, and may, in fact, erode trust in the process.

During the Scales arrests, Cole, a training officer, was not wearing a body camera that is now standard issue for patrol officers. The officers who later arrived on the scene were, but their footage won’t be released to the public or media, either.

State law does allow the city to release such video if city leaders believe doing so is essential to maintaining public confidence in local government. Certainly, in the wake of national tensions following the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., this seems like such an instance.

Miller did say last week that Rufus and Devin Scales may see the available footage, but no one else. Meanwhile, to her credit, Mayor Nancy Vaughan has expressed concern that the city invokes the personnel-records defense too often. As for the rest of the council, it remains conspicuously silent.

It had nothing to say when an officer fatally shot a knife-wielding woman in March and refused to release that video. And it has said not one syllable so far in the case of the Scales brothers.

Miller insists, “We have nothing to hide in the Scales case.”

Then, by all means, let’s go to the tape.