Wisconsin Attorney General Won't Release Body Cam Video Until The Cops Get Their Stories Straight

Earlier this month, a black man was shot and killed by police in Milwaukee. Sylville Smith was killed after a traffic stop, but police claimed Smith ran from the stop, then turned and pointed a semi-automatic gun at police. Milwaukee erupted in protests.

There’s been a lot of that going around, but this is a case that begged for more information. Nobody should die because of a traffic stop: not the person who is stopped, not the cop who stops them. Absent corroborating evidence, I’m not inclined to believe the cops if they tell me the sky is blue. But here both the police chief and the mayor of Milwaukee said that the body camera video backed up the cops’ story. From Fox News:

“The individual did turn toward the officer with a firearm in his hand,” said [Milwaukee Police Chief Edward] Flynn, later adding that Smith “was raising up with” the gun. Flynn said he had viewed the body camera footage, which had not yet been released to the public….

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett called for the quick release of the body camera footage, which he said he had not seen. Barrett said he had seen a still photo extracted from the tape, however.

“That still photo demonstrates without question that [Smith] had a gun in his hand, and I want our community to know that,” Barrett said.

That story was published on August 14. No body camera footage has been released. It would appear that the police and the mayor want the public to take their words for what is on the video, without letting the public see the actual footage.

In fact, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel held a press conference this morning explaining that the body camera footage would not be forthcoming any time soon. Schimel said: “Viewing the body camera videos will not answer all of your questions. Your questions will be better answered when the videos are viewed in the context of all the information that is gathered in the investigation.”

In less than two weeks, we’ve gone from a video that dispositively proves the cops’ story to one that needs to be contextualized for the public, and the only people who have seen the video are law enforcement and people with a vested interest with making law enforcement look good.

Could it be that Smith was trying to surrender when the cops plugged him? Are the cops being shown the video so they can come up with a plausible ex-post-facto explanation for the shooting? Why should the citizens of Milwaukee believe anything the police chief, the mayor, or the attorney general have to say?

On the other hand, video can be misleading. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it’s rarely the full story. When the state starts killing its citizens, communities become combustible, so more context is usually a good thing.

The problem is that we are out of people to trust. Law enforcement is compromised because the public, especially the African-American public, feels like law enforcement is only invested in making excuses for law enforcement. Politicians are compromised as they try to appease constituencies that are opposed. The courts are useless as prosecutors have shown no ability to hold their buddies on the police force accountable.

And we can’t even trust our lying eyes: two people will come to different conclusions when looking at the same video.

Eventually, the cops and attorneys in Wisconsin will get their stories straight and come out with a plausible explanation for gunning down an African-American. Some people will believe them, some won’t, and we’ll fight about it for a while… until the next officer shoots a black person to death.

If that cycle seems almost pointless to you, welcome to my world.

Milwaukee man shot by police seen with gun in body camera footage, officials say [Fox News]

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Elie Mystal is an editor at Above the Law and the legal editor of More Perfect. He’s been stopped by cops in Indiana and mugged in D.C., and he had a much more positive experience with the mugger.