Alamance judge lets police lock up videos. Exclusive clips show hostility to protesters.
An Alamance County judge agreed on Wednesday to allow local law enforcement to delay releasing video from an Oct. 31 march that made headlines worldwide.
The decision by Judge Andrew H. Hanford means that the footage will likely not be released to the public for months, if at all.
A review of some of the Graham Police video, obtained independently by The News & Observer, shows instances of police treating the mostly African American marchers with open hostility.
A coalition of news organizations, including The News & Observer, sought the video recorded by law enforcement to fact check narratives that emerged in news conferences and lawsuits. Body camera laws have been implemented in states across the country in response to calls for greater police accountability.
North Carolina’s law is unusual in it that leaves the release of law enforcement video up to the decision of a local Superior Court judge. The judge must consider several criteria, including the privacy interests of those represented in the video footage, in determining whether video should be released.
Last month, after reviewing the event footage and listening to arguments by the news organizations and law enforcement agencies, Hanford found that “failure to release the photos/recordings would undermine the public trust and confidence in the administration of justice.”
Graham filed a notice of appeal, and both law enforcement agencies declined to turn over the footage to a News & Observer visual journalist on June 15, the deadline set by Hanford’s order.
The timeline for when the Court of Appeals will decide the case is unclear. Until that process is finished, the disputed footage can stay under wraps, Hanford decided Wednesday.
The law enforcement agencies did not get all they asked for on Wednesday. Hanford rebuffed a request from Tony Biller, a private attorney hired by Graham, to force news organizations to obscure the faces and name tags on officers visible in the video.
Prior to an Oct. 31 march, Graham had one of the most persistent Black Lives Matter protests in the country. On that date, hundreds of people marched from a local A.M.E church to a historic courthouse where a controversial Confederate monument stands, intending to continuing to a nearby polling place.
After marchers stopped for a moment of silence, Graham police deployed pepper fog and forced them off the road. That and the release of subsequent rounds of pepper spray by Graham police and county sheriff deputies generated news headlines around the world.
The video that the News & Observer has reviewed was released, by subpoena, to people who were arrested at the march and charged with crimes. It includes video that shows officers joking about their eagerness to spray march participants.
In one clip, an officer approaches Rodney King, then a sergeant and now Graham’s assistant chief, to congratulate him for being the first to deploy pepper fog.
“I knew you’d spray first, I knew it,” the officer says. “I love it. I love it.” King responds by laughing, and the two officers exchange a fist bump.
Another clip shows Officer Brandon Land joking with another officer earlier in the day. “See, I haven’t even messed with them today, and they still hate me,” he says.
In a separate clip, another officer says, “OK, so eight minutes from now, we’re going to start clearing these mother****ers.”
Other footage shows marchers running into metal barricades after they have been subjected to the pepper fog. “Here we go, baby,” an officer can be heard saying. “Here we go.”
