Why can’t we just see the body cam video from the Jabari Peoples shooting?
There isn’t a case. There isn’t an investigation anymore. The family is OK with everyone seeing it.
So, why can’t the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, or the Homewood Police Department, or Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, or anyone else with a copy of the dang video just post it somewhere so we can all see exactly what happened?
This is absurd.
On Wednesday afternoon, after six weeks of the slowest film editing this side of a Marvel movie, ALEA finally OK’d Carr to allow the Peoples family to view the video from an unidentified Homewood police officer’s body cam, depicting the night in late June when Jabari Peoples was fatally shot.
But according to multiple interviews, that’s not what the Peoples family got to see.
Instead, what they saw was a heavily edited video—complete with slow motion, graphics and highlighted portions—that coupled together some, or maybe all, of the officer’s body cam footage with a narrative that ALEA wanted to provide.
That narrative: That Jabari Peoples had a gun in the car, resisted arrest and then was shot in the back only when he went to retrieve the gun from his car door.
And you know what? Maybe that’s absolutely the truth of it. Maybe that’s exactly what happened. Maybe the story all along is that this kid with no criminal record of any kind made a terrible decision that cost him his life.
Maybe.
We’d know for sure if we could all just see the video.
But instead, we are to take the word of Carr and the police. We are not to believe the family members had a different version of what the video they saw actually depicted. We are not to believe their attorneys.
Now, it should be noted that Carr has a reputation—a well earned one—for being a straight shooter. A guy who just takes the facts and pursues the case no matter which way it goes. I’ve spoken to a number of people who know Carr well—people who are civil rights activists and people who are former cops and people who have tried cases in Jefferson County—and they all respect the man.
I don’t doubt him when he says that the video he saw, in his opinion, depicted a justified shooting. I don’t doubt him. But I’d also like to see it for myself.
Because, well, Steven Perkins. That’s why.
Perkins was gunned down in his front yard by Decatur Police. In the hours after the shooting, DPD released a statement saying that Perkins had threatened a tow truck driver with a gun, that officers ordered him to drop his firearm and that Perkins refused, then turning the weapon on them before an officer shot and killed him.
None of that was true. And footage from nearby security cameras on Perkins’ neighbors’ homes outed those lies.
Those videos showed essentially a police ambush, as officers hid in the dark around Perkins’ home and surprised him when he exited to stop the repossession of his truck. They never ordered him to drop his weapon. They never gave him an opportunity to comply. Before the first bullet hit him, it’s unlikely that Perkins ever knew DPD officers were on the scene.
A firestorm ensued. And in the meantime, ALEA was handling that investigation as well. An investigation in which it held the body cam footage from officers.
Weeks went by before that footage was provided to the Morgan County DA. When it was, it was also leaked to the media.
That video was much like the one the Peoples family described on Wednesday. Heavily edited. Spliced together. Slow motion. Graphics and circles and enhanced portions with labels that aren’t clearly accurate.
The ALEA-produced video from the Perkins shooting looked like something a defense team would put together to defend their client. Of all the edits on the video—all the circles and highlights and slow-motion editing—there wasn’t a single one that painted the officers in a negative light. And every single edit seemed to be an effort to show that Perkins threatened officers with a gun.
Never mind that the cop who shot Perkins was mostly hidden behind a parked vehicle. Never mind that he sprang from darkness. Never mind that the cops hid their vehicles down the street and never alerted Perkins to their presence. Never mind that there was a gap of less than two seconds between the officer first screaming “Hey! Police! Get on the ground!” and the first bullet being fired.
None of that was worth mentioning. Entire portions—several minutes worth—of the body cam footage was edited out.
Instead, the only “relevant facts”—that’s the terminology ALEA used in the Perkins’ videos—that were deemed relevant by ALEA were the ones that showed the flashlight beam attached to Perkins’ firearm moving in the direction of the cop who shot him.
Without the proper context, that might be enough to justify that shooting. But a Morgan County Circuit Court judge, when weighing all of it together in the Perkins case, determined the cops weren’t there on police business because they didn’t behave like cops should have. Basically, because of their actions, he said, the cops had become civilians trespassing in a private citizen’s yard, and had no right to claim self defense.
In other words, not at all what that video showed.
Now, maybe these two cases are totally different. Maybe there isn’t any additional context needed. Maybe there’s just a straight story of a good kid making a bad decision, as Carr said. Maybe the Jabari Peoples shooting was totally justified.
Maybe. But there’s one way we can know for sure.
Let us see the full, unedited body cam video.
