Last Week Tonight With John Oliver (2014) s13e03 Episode Script
Body Cameras
Welcome to "Last Week Tonight"!
I'm John Oliver. Thank you
so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week,
and I mean really busy.
Trump, against zero odds,
delivered the longest
state of the union in history.
The U.S. and Israel attacked
Iran, with Israeli officials claiming
they've killed
Ayatollah Khamenei, and look,
we're taping this on Saturday,
so who knows what's happened
by the time you see this?
Meanwhile, elsewhere,
the Clintons testified about
their connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
And it turns out, we might be
getting a new business daddy.
Netflix has backed out of its bid
to buy Warner Bros. Discovery,
paving the way for rival
Paramount Skydance to take over.
Yeah, not great news!
In fact, if I may quote
anyone who's ever accidentally
sat on their Roku remote,
"Shit! I'm in Paramount now, how
the fuck do I get out of this?"
Also, last Sunday saw the U.S.
men's hockey team win gold,
only for this to happen.
A wild scene in the locker room
with FBI director Kash Patel
even spotted
celebrating with the team,
appearing to chug a beer
before raising the bottle in the air,
spraying it across the locker room.
Yeah,
that is the director of the FBI,
looking like a little kid
who won a prize
for collecting the most canned goods
and got to go into the locker room.
Also, for what it's worth,
he didn't chug a beer,
then spray it across
the locker room.
A successful chug would render
the bottle unsprayable.
What he basically did there
was drink a beer weird,
and then kind of fling
his backwash around.
Anyway, it was fun while
it lasted, but it's official:
hockey sucks dick now,
and sadly, not in the hot way.
Now, Patel's presence there was
strange for a number of reasons,
not least that his press
office had insisted
his trip to the Olympics was
for work,
trashing reports suggesting
otherwise as "false" and "garbage".
But when his itinerary was released,
it showed his four-day trip contained
only several hours of work meetings
and a handful of meet-and-greets,
broken up by long segments
of personal and leisure time,
with his final day consisting
of just the gold medal game,
followed by his flight home.
And look, nothing against going
to Italy and getting a photo op.
A couple of years back,
every living comedian but me
pulled that same move,
and I hear they had a great time.
But the work-to-play ratio
seems a little off here.
And this was just the latest instance
of Patel seeming to use the FBI jet
for personal trips, which is a
little rich coming from him,
given, just over two years ago,
he sat down with Glenn Beck
and complained about his
predecessor's use of it like this.
Chris Wray doesn't need a government
funded G5 jet to go to vacation.
Maybe we ground that plane.
15,000 every time it takes off.
Just a thought.
Okay, so first, let me address
this man-cave.
Because it has everything to
hang out with the boys:
a chalkboard, a typewriter in a box,
a second camera in frame,
and most crucially, three
staggeringly different seating options.
You might all be talking,
but those pieces couldn't be less
in conversation with each other.
But more importantly, the FBI director
is actually required by law
to take the bureau's private plane.
But crucially,
if the travel is personal,
they're required
to reimburse the government,
though only for the cost
of a commercial flight.
And Patel's been using the jet
a lot since he took office,
to, among other things, go to
an exclusive golf resort in Scotland
for a getaway with friends,
and to travel to a Real American
Freestyle Wrestling event
where his girlfriend was
performing the national anthem.
He then flew to Texas to a resort
literally called the Boondoggle Ranch,
which'd be bad enough
even if it didn't happen
during the government shutdown,
and if he weren't hosted
by a Republican mega-donor named,
and this is true, Bubba Saulsbury.
Which sounds like either the name
of a baseball player from 1954
who was also in the Klan
or a dinner special at Denny's.
And when Patel and his
country-singer girlfriend
went on a podcast with Katie Miller,
who is Stephen Miller's,
and let me make sure
I've got this right, wife?
He offered up
this not-great defense.
It's ironic that they're saying,
you're going on vacation
or you're going
to see your girlfriend perform.
And if I was actually abusing it,
I would go see every one of her shows.
I think I get to like 15%.
So that's okay, then.
We all know it's not abuse
if you don't do it
as much as you technically could,
you deeply weird man.
If you're expecting me to show you
a clip of his girlfriend's music,
I refuse to do that,
I will just point out
that if you go to the YouTube page
for her song "Country Back",
about how she wants her country back,
and scroll down,
the top comment reads simply,
and went to listen to this?"
And I'd love to agree with
that except, again,
he didn't borrow the jet,
we all paid for it.
Thousands of dollars to take off.
Just a thought.
And the thing is, Patel's Olympic trip
wasn't even the first time
he's been accused
of treating work like a vacation.
Last May, he went to the U.K.
for a meeting of the "Five Eyes",
an intelligence alliance
with close English-speaking allies,
and also, by the way,
my high school nickname
when bullies determined
something stronger
than "four eyes" was required.
And while Patel's U.K. itinerary was
tightly packed with important meetings,
according to one senior official,
Patel wanted to move them
to more fun venues,
because, quote, "He wants
Premier soccer games."
"He wants to go jet skiing.
He'd like a helicopter tour."
His staff only cared about
three things:
what his meals were, when his
workouts would be,
and what his entertainment
would be.
The biggest plan is how he's going
to get his girlfriend in there
so she can go
to Windsor Castle.
Which feels like what a 15-year-old
boy thinks a trip to England is.
Soccer, jet ski with James
Bond's boss,
and take your girlfriend
to the castle.
I'm gonna show her the full
"Agent Cody Banks."
And it can seem like Patel's
much more interested
in the trappings of his job
than the job itself.
For instance, at one point
he ordered special, extra-large
"challenge coins" to hand out,
which looked like this.
And I assume he hands them out
after only the sickest quests,
like completing No Nut November
or failing anger management.
They look like the currency
you use to pay for a divorce.
But the thing is,
this fixation on optics
can make him very bad at his job.
Take what happened last September,
after Charlie Kirk was shot.
Within hours, Patel took to Twitter
to announce that,
"The subject for the horrific
shooting today is now in custody",
only to, 98 minutes later, have to
follow that with a tweet saying,
"The subject in custody
has been released."
And in the words of one FBI veteran,
"It wasn't a good look."
Which does make sense,
among other things,
Patel's first post sure made it sound
like people could stop worrying
about an armed shooter on the loose,
when that was not the case.
And yet, he stood by his actions.
Could I have had worded it a little
better in the heat of the moment?
Sure. But do I regret putting
it out? Absolutely not.
I was telling the world what
the FBI was doing as we were doing,
and I'm continuing to do that,
and I challenge anyone out there
to find a director
that has been more transparent
and more willing to work the media
on high-profile cases,
or any case the FBI is handling.
Okay, but the FBI director shouldn't be
"working the media" for likes.
You're supposed to be solving the case,
not providing running commentary.
There's a reason the CIA has never
sent out a press release saying,
"We think we found an alien!"
And then 90 minutes later
had to say,
"Never mind, it was just
a fucked up looking squirrel."
And the chaos in the Kirk investigation
continued once Patel landed in Utah.
Because according to one senior
leader in counterintelligence,
"Patel didn't have a raid jacket"
"and reportedly ordered people
to go find him one."
He needed a size medium.
They found him a female's jacket
that didn't have the patches
that he wanted,
so he had the SWAT team
taking their patches off
to put on his jacket before
he'd go to the press conference.
And sure enough,
that is what he then wore.
Now, I do have to tell you,
he disputes that account
and even went on Fox News
to "work the media" on the story.
I was honoring my men
and women at the FBI.
One of my agents handed me
a jacket and said,
"Boss, you should probably wear this,
we're going into the command center."
I said, I'd be honored to wear that.
And then another one handed
me the SWAT team badge of the unit
that was protecting the area
where Charlie was assassinated.
I wore that with pride.
I mean, okay.
Although, to be fair,
Kash wearing something
with pride isn't exactly a high bar,
given he might be the first FBI
director who has his own apparel line.
And yes, that is a logo featuring
Trump as the Punisher as Santa.
And yes, his hat does say
"K-dollar sign-H,"
which I do get is supposed
to stand for Kash,
but it makes him look like
he's in a shitty Kesha cover band.
But, wait, 'cause it gets even worse.
Because when Patel and his
then-deputy, Dan Bongino,
joined a conference call
about the shooting,
FBI officials were apparently
shocked by their fixation
on social media,
with one saying of Patel,
"He's screaming that he wants
to put stuff out,"
"but it's not even vetted yet.
It's not even accurate."
"Everyone on the call is just like:
This guy is out of control."
And let's just agree, you should
never be on any conference call
thinking,
"This guy is out of control."
At worst, you should be thinking,
"If I died right now,
would anyone notice?"
"Would anyone care?"
And it says something that,
by the time Kirk's alleged killer
turned himself in,
Utah's governor Spencer Cox had taken
the lead in handling the press,
with a source telling Fox
News that, quote,
"Letting Kash talk much could
fuck up the prosecution."
The point is, Patel seems
in way over his head.
But weirdly, Trump might
actually like that right now,
given that there are certain areas
where he might prefer loyalty
over competence.
Most notably, the Epstein case.
'Cause before Patel became
FBI director,
he insisted that the agency
could release
an alleged list of people Epstein
had trafficked underage girls to,
and he was incredulous that Republicans
hadn't already demanded that.
What the hell are the House
Republicans doing?
They have the majority.
You can't get the list?
You're gonna accept Dick
Durban's word
or whoever that guy is
as to who is on that list
and who isn't and that it can
and can't be released?
Put on your big boy pants and
let us know who the pedophiles are.
Wait!
"Put on your big boy pants?"
Not sure that's the language I'd use
to talk about catching pedophiles,
given it sounds more like
the slogan for a clothing line
started by Jared from Subway.
But Patel's now singing
a very different tune,
arguing there's no credible information
Epstein trafficked young women
to anyone beside himself.
And whenever the subject
of Trump's name
being in the files has come up,
things have been
noticeably tense.
Did you tell the attorney general
that the president's name
is in the Epstein files?
During many conversations
that the attorney general and I
have had on the matter
The question is simple:
did you tell the attorney general
that Donald Trump's name
is in the Epstein files. Yes or no?
- Why don't you try spelling it out.
- Yes or no?
- Use the alphabet.
- Yes or no?
No? ABCDEF?
You got him,
you got him so good.
By the way, later in that hearing,
a photo showed Patel holding a note
reading, "Good fight with Swalwell.
Hold the line."
And I don't know what would be
a more embarrassing explanation,
whether he wrote that note
to himself, or his mom wrote it
and slipped it in his
Tasmanian Devil lunchbox.
And his defensiveness there is striking
now the files are being released,
and Trump's name is all over them.
While that doesn't necessarily show
evidence of wrongdoing,
this week, NPR scrutinized the files
and revealed something odd.
The spotlight tonight on what's not
in the millions of Epstein files
released by the DOJ:
summaries and notes
from three separate interviews
the FBI conducted
with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser
who also made sex abuse allegations
against President Trump
in 2019.
Yeah, that looks pretty damning.
In fact, the only thing that could be
any more suspicious is if we eventually
find out that the night Epstein died,
Trump was caught buying a
bunch of rope at Home Depot.
And look, I'm not sure how
long Patel's gonna stay in this job.
Trump's reportedly displeased
with his Olympics "hijinks."
But as stupid as that locker
room footage is,
and it's very, very stupid,
it might actually be the perfect
encapsulation of his tenure at the FBI.
'Cause think about it: he's
in somewhere that he doesn't belong,
wearing something
that makes him look ridiculous,
and objectively having way
too good of a time.
And when all of this is said
and done, and he's eventually gone,
someone else is gonna have
to clean up his fucking mess.
And now, this.
And Now: The Dan Bongino
Show Is Back,
And It Is Weird As Fuck.
It is good to see you guys
and ladies out there.
It's been a crazy year.
For those of you watching
the show right now,
we are obviously live.
My watch, well, anybody
can set a time on a watch,
but you get the point,
I think it's fairly obvious.
And I'm gonna tell you something,
I ate this morning
for the first time in three days, and
man, I feel like a million dollars.
So, just throwing that out there.
Elbow's a little sore this morning.
I was putting on a shirt
the other day,
my elbow snapped back
and it is, like, killing me.
So, I had to take an Advil when
I got up. I'm like, what the hell?
Sorry, my eye getting a little red?
I feel like I have a little something
in my eye there.
You see how it's a little red
over there?
I know, I drink funny. I told you,
I got arthritis in my elbow.
Nothing like being a dad.
I don't have any boys.
I've got an older daughter
and a younger daughter
and they're pretty far apart.
I probably should've had one
in between and taken a shot.
I'm one of three boys.
I have a stepsister,
but I never had a boy.
Hey, Dick! Dicko! Dicky!
Dicko, did you see that?
They call you Dicko, your friends?
Dicky, Dicko, something like?
Some of my friends call me Dano,
maybe they call him Dicko,
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know.
You don't have to, like, speculate
That was my plastic cigar.
Don't get distracted because
if there's a "there" there,
don't get into another
"there" that's not there,
because it takes away from
the "there" that's there.
Do you get my point?
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns the police.
The main thing Steven Seagal
pretends to be,
aside from "a guy whose hair
is naturally black."
I'm sorry, but the only way you get
that color
is by dunking your head
into a vat of printer ink.
Specifically, we're gonna talk about
a tool police use
that's responsible for, among
other things, this incredible story.
A shocking scene for kids
at a Chuck E. Cheese.
One minute they are just
having fun
and then all of a sudden
police rush in
and put Chuck E. Cheese
in handcuffs.
- We're gonna detain the mouse, dude.
- Yes, we are.
539, we have one detained.
He's a suspect.
He stole someone's card here
and has been using it, someone
that was one of your employees
like last week or something
like that, so, yeah.
No, Chuck E.! No!
There is a lot going on there!
From the kid screaming
"Chuck E., no!"
to the phrase, "We're gonna
detain the mouse, dude,"
which sounds like what
an ICE agent would say
if Fievel tried to immigrate
to America today.
That arrest is one of many videos
we've only been able to see
thanks to police body cameras, the
devices that give us a nipples-eye view
of law enforcement's interactions
with the public.
They are ubiquitous now, but
body cams are still fairly new.
As recently as 2013, only a third
of police departments had them.
But by 2020, 79% of officers
reported working in departments
with body-worn cameras,
to the point it's been said
that they represent
the largest new investment
in policing in a generation.
And body cams have been viewed
as a popular solution
to problems regarding transparency
in law enforcement,
which may be why a key
Democratic demand right now
for ending the shutdown of funding
to DHS involves this catchy phrase.
We want there to be masks off,
body cameras on.
Masks off, body cameras on.
We want masks off,
body cameras on.
Stirring stuff.
That is the leader
of the opposition there.
And that is truly
the best he's got.
Honestly, you could set a
white noise machine
to "fiery Chuck Schumer speech",
and get a full eight hours.
And the truth is, body cams
can seem like a great tool
for increasing accountability
and building trust.
And cops themselves tend
to value them too,
though for slightly different
reasons than the rest of us,
as for them, it's more about reducing
frivolous or false complaints.
In fact, according to a 2018 survey,
while just 34% of local police
and sheriffs' offices said
they acquired body-worn cameras
to reduce use of force,
nearly 80% wanted them in order
to do things like
"improve officer safety,
increase evidence quality,"
"reduce civilian complaints,
and reduce agency liability."
And look, ideally, you can
have all of those things.
In fact, as this police
captain in Virginia sees it,
the best-case scenario for body cams
is them improving everyone's behavior.
When a camera is present,
everyone acts a little bit better.
So, perhaps this is an opportunity
for us to de-escalate an incident.
If something is very escalated, it'll
be a reminder to everyone involved,
to include the officers and the public
that a camera's present
and hopefully that we all
are acting a little better,
a little more civil to each other.
Well, that certainly sounds
nice, doesn't it?
Although "when a camera's present,
everyone acts a bit better"
is an observation from someone who
clearly doesn't watch reality TV,
a world in which a camera's presence
is your cue
to throw a glass of pinot grigio
into someone's face
and call them a whore
in the middle of a nice restaurant.
Still, that notion that body
cams can be a way
of calming down interactions
with law enforcement is appealing,
and it may be why it seems
we're about to slap them
on the chests of all ICE agents
across the country
in the name of accountability.
But the thing is, the more
you look into body cams,
the more you realize they are only
effective if they're used properly,
and in many cases,
they are just not.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about body cams.
And let's start with the fact
that straight away,
there are certain limitations
to what they can tell us,
as, because of their field of view,
they can't capture
the full context
of everything going on.
And while I think you probably
already get that,
just watch as this Today show
reporter demonstrates it
in the weirdest possible way.
Seth is putting on a body camera.
My producer, Jovana, is off to the
side, shooting from a distance,
on her iPhone, to give us the complete
picture, like a bystander would.
Scenario one, something Seth
calls deceptive intensity.
Watch this body camera footage
closely. What's happening here?
All right. Now let's look from
the bystander's iPhone.
That's right. No brawl here.
Just really bad dancing.
Okay, I will admit, that
demonstration was effective
because the body cam footage
did look like a violent brawl,
when we now know,
they were in fact doing
a Richard Simmons workout
at each other.
And that's not the only weird
demonstration like that.
Interpretation can be very
misleading.
For example, you, the viewer at home,
can only see me from the chest up.
You have no idea
what's in my hand.
However, the view from a second
camera may show
that I'm holding what
appears to be a gun,
when in reality,
I'm just holding a flashlight.
Okay, I'll be honest, that felt
less like a local news segment
and more like the routine of the
world's worst birthday magician.
Gather around kids!
For my first trick, you probably
think I have a gun in my hand,
but it's actually a flashlight!
What's that?
Your parents want their money back?
No problem! Here's their money
or is it actually another flashlight!
But those examples, while ridiculous,
do show how hard it can be
to interpret
what's captured on video.
But the audio
can be deceptive as well.
Take this example from Florida,
where the shouts of officers
wound up shaping
a very misleading narrative.
Officers were wearing
body-worn cameras,
and they were chasing
after an individual.
He walked over to the sidewalk,
and laid down on the sidewalk,
spread-eagled.
And you can hear on
the body-worn camera footage
officers screaming, you know,
"Stop resisting!"
We will ice you!
Get your hands behind you!
Stop resisting!
He claimed that
they beat him unnecessarily,
nobody believed him until that video
from the nearby building came out.
Yeah, they're yelling "stop resisting"
when he wasn't resisting at all.
It can be powerful to claim
something's happening
that the camera cannot see.
It'd be like me telling you
that under this desk
I've got the thighs of a bodybuilder
and an ass that won't quit.
When the truth is, I've got two
perfectly average thighs
and an ass that quits all the time.
And that's not a one-off.
A similar situation happened in
the beating death of Tyre Nichols,
where the audio on officers' body
cams picked them up saying
things like, "Lay flat,"
only for another video to emerge
showing him lying limp
as an officer handcuffed him.
The point is, there are immediately
limits to what a camera can show you.
But those limitations
get even more acute
when cops mute, obscure,
or turn off their cameras.
Which happens, and sometimes,
on purpose.
And that is something driven home
by this incident,
where a police captain who was
arrested for drunk driving
kept trying to convey something
to the officer who pulled him over.
- You've been drinking tonight?
- I just got a ride.
You've being drinking tonight, sir.
I'm a captain
in the police department.
- What police department?
- Oklahoma City.
Turn the camera off.
How much have you had
to drink tonight, sir?
Turn your camera off, please.
- Turn your camera off.
- I'm not turning my camera off.
Yeah, that is a police captain
whispering, "Turn your camera off,"
while simultaneously
staring into it
like a raccoon
caught on a Ring doorbell.
And it is genuinely hard to imagine
a more embarrassing way
to get arrested than that,
which is saying something
because you just saw someone
get handcuffed
while dressed like a giant mouse.
It makes sense that these
things have an off button,
cops need to be able to take a shit
in peace like the rest of us.
Some of the people they talk to might
need their privacy protected, too.
That is why Connecticut, for instance,
has a law that says
they have to turn cameras
off in cases like
"during an encounter with an undercover
officer or informant,"
"when an officer is on break
or engaged in personal business,"
"and when a person is undergoing a
medical or psychological evaluation."
But obviously,
some critical interactions,
when people have been hurt or
killed by police, still go unrecorded.
While you might think, "Maybe
the incident escalated suddenly"
"and officers didn't have time
to turn their cameras on,"
you should know, most body cams are
basically always in a standby mode
in which the camera is powered on
and rolling,
but not yet permanently
saving the footage.
It's only when an officer presses
record
that the camera will begin saving
footage to permanent memory.
That saved clip
then includes footage recorded
for a predetermined amount
of "buffer time"
before the record button was pressed,
which can range from 15 seconds
to two minutes.
So, there's actually a meaningful
amount of context
that can get captured prior to an
officer hitting record
if that's something
they're inclined to do.
And yet, oftentimes,
they just happen to be turned off
during incidents
of police violence.
For example, even though the LAPD
requires officers
to turn on their cameras before
any interaction with the public,
nearly a fourth of its officers
involved in incidents
where serious force was used failed
to activate them in a timely manner.
Some unions and police officials
are quick to excuse that sort of thing.
For instance, not long after
Houston rolled out body cams,
two police officers shot
a man near a gas station,
but neither turned on their cameras
until the incident was over.
And this is how the police union's
then-president defended that.
This was the first real high-profile
test of this department's
body-worn camera policy.
Pass or fail?
If the officer's primary responsibility
was his safety, he passed.
If his primary responsibility was
videotaping the scene, he failed.
If he was your cameraman and only
had to worry about videotaping that,
I would blame that cameraman
for not getting it.
But that's not his primary
responsibility.
His primary responsibility
is to make sure he's safe
and the public's safe.
Okay, but he did shoot someone.
My cameraman gets footage
and has never shot anyone.
While doing this job, at least.
I don't know what Dante does during
his off-hours, that's his time.
Also, activating a body camera isn't
exactly an overwhelming task.
We looked into it, and the process is,
step one: press the record button,
step two: end of steps.
But even if an officer
does turn on their camera,
and even if it shows
what happened clearly,
there's still the issue of
what happens to all the footage.
Because to be clear, there is
an enormous amount of it.
To give you a sense of scale, Axon,
the nation's largest
police camera provider,
offers cloud storage for many
of its clients' footage.
And its database is more than 100
petabytes of footage,
equivalent to more than 5,000 years
of high-definition video.
Which is pretty wild, isn't it,
both that there is so much of it,
and also that "petabyte"
is a real unit of digital storage
and not what it sounds like, a snack
food brand exclusively for pedophiles.
"Pedo Bite: have a snack,
you fuckin' monster!"
Most of that footage
will never be watched by anyone,
which is understandable.
It's impossible for agencies
to look at every minute of footage
from all these cameras.
But far too often, even footage
that documents misconduct
isn't meaningfully reviewed,
meaninging departments miss
opportunities to spot
both problem officers and
broader patterns of abuse.
After the murder of George Floyd,
it emerged that body cams
had captured Derek Chauvin
kneeling on the necks of others,
including a handcuffed Black woman
and a 14-year-old Black boy.
In both those cases, supervisors
had access to the recordings
yet cleared Chauvin's conduct.
And when a state civil rights
investigation later looked at
"700 hours of body cam footage,"
it found Minneapolis cops repeatedly
used neck restraints,
and concluded that if police
or the city
had conducted a substantive audit
of the footage, they would have seen
how often officers there were using
neck restraints,
and could have taken steps
to stop it.
And clearly,
someone should've done that.
There's no point in the police stacking
up thousands of hours of footage
that nobody's ever going to see.
Especially given that we all know,
that is Paramount+'s job.
What're they gonna do?
Take us over and immediately
cancel us? I'm genuinely asking.
Internally, departments aren't reviewing
their own footage nearly enough.
When it comes to public transparency,
the results have been all over the map.
And you might be thinking,
"Why not just put all the footage
out there for everyone to see?"
The thing is, there are legitimate
reasons not to do that.
First, there are issues
with how all that video
could be fed
into facial recognition systems,
which we have talked about before.
But also, remember,
body cams can show vulnerable
or embarrassing moments,
which can be exploited
for entertainment.
And I know we've already showed you
a couple of examples of that tonight.
But we thought a lot about
why we were doing that and how.
In the mouse one,
his face is covered.
And in the police captain one,
you might've noticed,
he was a police captain.
But there are countless channels
on YouTube that've made a business
out of obtaining body cam
footage of people in distress,
and which do feel like
they're leaning into exploitation.
One channel has videos called
"Entitled Lady Finally Gets
What She Deserves,"
and "Buckle Up Kids,
Grandma's Drunk,"
which sounds like a kids book
written by Kathie Lee Gifford.
Another channel has videos, mainly
of young women, with titles like
"19-Year-Old Girl Arrested for DUI
at Over Double the Limit"
"After Getting Drunk at the Beach,"
which is pretty grim.
And by the way, we've blurred faces
there, but they don't do that.
And it almost makes me think
that YouTube as a whole
might not've been worth it,
offsetting its real accomplishments
like this video
of a chihuahua riding a turtle,
or this one of Kelsey Grammer
falling off a stage,
or this one of a sheep
screaming like a human.
Yeah, that might be the best
thing ever posted to YouTube,
and if you're thinking,
"John, what about the several hundred
episodes of your show?"
I said what I said.
Now, those channels often get videos
through public records requests.
But police departments
can have a huge amount of leeway
when it comes to what they release,
as in most places,
policymakers have defaulted to leaving
them with the power to decide
what's recorded, who can see it,
and when.
Just watch as a reporter
asked Charlotte's then-police chief
how to reconcile his commitment
to transparency,
with his department's refusal
to release video of a police shooting.
You seem to give
mixed messages here.
On the one hand you're saying
we should have full transparency,
on the other hand you're saying
you're not gonna release the video.
How can you square
those two things?
The idea of full transparency is
release the videos so we can see it.
Sure, I appreciate your passion,
but I never said full transparency.
I said transparency. And transparency
is in the eye of the beholder.
Wait!
"Transparency is in the eye
of the beholder"?
That is just fully nonsense.
That sounds like the last thoughts
of a pigeon
that's about to smash
into a closed window.
And yet that has been the de facto
stance of many departments.
For example, even though
in 2020 the NYPD promised
to release footage of "critical
incidents" within 30 days,
when ProPublica looked into it
three years later,
they found that,
out of 380 such incidents,
the NYPD had released footage
within a month just twice.
And in South Carolina,
when the police there had killed
at least 19 people in 2023,
they'd only released footage
in three of those cases,
with one department refusing
a request by saying,
"We never release that footage."
And a popular argument police use
is that making video public
would undermine
the integrity of an investigation.
It's an excuse which works in almost
every state in the country,
even when there's rules
for public access.
They'll also argue
that reviewing the footage,
and redacting sensitive information,
like juveniles' faces or witnesses'
identities, carries a prohibitive cost.
In Las Vegas, police charged about
70 dollars an hour to produce footage,
while in Memphis,
journalists have been asked to pay
as much as 3,100 dollars
in hourly labor costs
for video from a single case.
And as one expert said,
"For a local news organization, a bill
for 2,000 might as well be a denial."
Which does make sense,
doesn't it?
Local news are known
for a lot of things:
dedicated employees,
probing investigations,
inadvertently broadcasting massive
dicks on their weather maps,
but they're not famous
for rolling in money.
And even if footage gets released,
it can be so heavily redacted
it's then essentially useless.
For example, until last year,
Tempe, Arizona's police
department had a policy
which mandated that all
body cam footage they released
would "include
a general medium blur."
And just so you know, this is what
their blurred footage looks like.
And it is notable that,
when body cam footage
shows officers in a bad light,
they will often cite the cost
and technical hurdles of redaction
to not release it.
But when it shows them
in a good light,
those problems seem to disappear.
Just watch as a reporter in Texas
confronts a police chief,
who was claiming that,
because they didn't have the ability
to redact video themselves,
they couldn't release a video of
a police search during a traffic stop.
In the year 2024,
why doesn't this department have
software to redact videos?
It's really expensive for us to get.
Angleton chief Lupe Valdez
showed us a quote
from their body cam vendor:
more than 14,000 dollars.
Budget-wise, it's not
in our budget to do that.
But there's this:
body cam video Angleton police
released a few months ago
of a crash where officers heroically
pulled a driver out of the burning car.
And look, portions are blurred.
How were you able to redact
the video in that case?
- We paid somebody to do that.
- So, let me get this straight.
When your officers are heroes,
you find a way to release it,
but when your officers are scrutinized,
you find a way to withhold it?
- No, sir.
- That's what happened here, chief.
No, sir.
Yes, sir.
That is exactly what happened.
That interview could not have been
any more embarrassing for him.
Which is why I'm sure he'd prefer
if we blurred him right now,
but I'm not gonna do that,
because, much like him,
I only pay people to redact video
when I fucking feel like it.
But maybe no case illustrates
the extent to which
the mere presence of body cams
isn't sufficient
to prevent police violence,
or indeed bring accountability,
more than that of Ronald Greene,
a Louisiana man
who died following an encounter
with police in 2019.
Officers initially told his family
that he'd died on impact
after crashing his car
at the end of a chase with police.
And even though there was body cam
footage from officers on the scene,
state officials,
including the then-governor,
repeatedly refused to publicly
release it for more than two years.
In the end, someone wound up
leaking the video to the AP,
which is how people came to see
a state trooper
"wrestling Greene to the ground,
putting him in a chokehold"
"and punching him in the face."
And I'm not gonna show you
the video of any of that.
But I do think it's worth
seeing one moment,
from one of the officers' body cams,
as he drove away from the scene.
And I beat
the ever-living fuck out of him,
choked him, and everything else,
trying to get him under control.
And then all of a sudden,
he just went limp.
Yeah, I thought he was dead.
We sat him up real quick,
he's on the ambulance
en route to Lynwood,
and I'm hauling ass
trying to catch up to him.
You think you,
y'all got it on body cam?
Yeah, as soon as he was reminded
his body camera was on,
he turned it off.
Which is pretty damning!
It is honestly the panicked move
of someone whose internal
monologue was essentially just this.
Yeah, exactly.
None of the six officers
on the scene
wound up facing much
in the way of charges.
The guy in that video wound up dying
the following year in a car crash.
As for the other five, only two
were convicted on any charges,
and those were misdemeanors
plead down,
but charges against
the other three were dismissed,
and the DOJ dropped its criminal
investigation, saying
it had "found insufficient evidence
to support federal charges."
But that might be because, even
though there was body cam footage,
the microphones weren't always on,
and not all of the troopers
at the scene
had their cameras on
during the arrest.
And that does not seem
like a coincidence.
Because the AP found state troopers
there had made a habit
of turning off or muting
body cams during pursuits,
that when footage is recorded,
the agency routinely refused
to release it,
and one supervisor in the department
even told internal investigators
that it was his "common practice"
to rubber-stamp officers'
use-of-force reports
without reviewing body cam video.
And if you're not even
gonna watch the footage,
why give your officers
body cams at all?
You might as well just let them
hang a baloney sandwich
off their shirt instead.
It'll lead to exactly
as much accountability
and they'll have a little meat
snack in case they get hungry.
If someone
hadn't leaked that footage,
we'd likely never have known
about any of this.
But hoping for leaks just
cannot be the system here.
So, what do we do?
I would argue we have to take back
the power from police departments
to decide
when and how to use body cams.
Some agencies are transitioning
to "auto-triggering technologies",
like sensors that switch them on
when officers do things
like draw their gun
or exit their police car.
Experts told us those
aren't necessarily bad ideas,
but they're likely to fall flat
if they aren't combined
with clear, enforceable rules
stating the footage must be retained,
routinely reviewed,
and released in a timely manner,
especially in critical incidents.
One way of doing that
is to have those rules enforced
by an independent body,
free of police influence.
And all of this is really
worth bearing in mind
during the current debate
over requiring federal agents
to wear body cams
during immigration enforcement.
Because it's worth remembering
a pretty important fact
about the officers
in the Alex Pretti shooting.
Customs and Border Protection
officers involved in the deadly shooting
were wearing body cameras.
The agency says
the footage is preserved
but it's unclear when or whether
the public's going to see it.
Can I ask you a question,
why isn't it automatic
that the body camera footage
would eventually be released?
You would think it would be,
here, though,
the Trump administration has resisted
cooperation with any investigation,
and George, remember that
they've already drawn a conclusion
that the shooting was justified.
Yeah, they still haven't released
the body cam footage,
kind of rendering that whole
"masks off, body cams on" slogan
pretty toothless.
Though, to be fair, I guess
"masks off, body cams on,"
"and operating under clear guidelines
about when footage is released"
"and overseen by an independent body
to ensure maximum transparency"
isn't quite as catchy.
And if Chuck Schumer tries to say it,
I think his head might explode.
The point is, the reason
we know what happened to Alex Pretti
isn't because of body cams,
it's because of all the other people
with cell phones filming what happened.
And that
is going to need to continue.
Because until
we see significant changes,
body cams will just never
live up to their promise
of shining a real light
on misconduct.
And if you need a visual metaphor
for a light being shined on things,
don't worry,
because I have in my hand,
and this may surprise you,
a flashlight!
That's our show, thank you
so much for watching,
we'll see you next week,
good night!
Don't blur me!
Don't blur me!
I don't want to be blurred!
I'm John Oliver. Thank you
so much for joining us.
It has been a busy week,
and I mean really busy.
Trump, against zero odds,
delivered the longest
state of the union in history.
The U.S. and Israel attacked
Iran, with Israeli officials claiming
they've killed
Ayatollah Khamenei, and look,
we're taping this on Saturday,
so who knows what's happened
by the time you see this?
Meanwhile, elsewhere,
the Clintons testified about
their connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
And it turns out, we might be
getting a new business daddy.
Netflix has backed out of its bid
to buy Warner Bros. Discovery,
paving the way for rival
Paramount Skydance to take over.
Yeah, not great news!
In fact, if I may quote
anyone who's ever accidentally
sat on their Roku remote,
"Shit! I'm in Paramount now, how
the fuck do I get out of this?"
Also, last Sunday saw the U.S.
men's hockey team win gold,
only for this to happen.
A wild scene in the locker room
with FBI director Kash Patel
even spotted
celebrating with the team,
appearing to chug a beer
before raising the bottle in the air,
spraying it across the locker room.
Yeah,
that is the director of the FBI,
looking like a little kid
who won a prize
for collecting the most canned goods
and got to go into the locker room.
Also, for what it's worth,
he didn't chug a beer,
then spray it across
the locker room.
A successful chug would render
the bottle unsprayable.
What he basically did there
was drink a beer weird,
and then kind of fling
his backwash around.
Anyway, it was fun while
it lasted, but it's official:
hockey sucks dick now,
and sadly, not in the hot way.
Now, Patel's presence there was
strange for a number of reasons,
not least that his press
office had insisted
his trip to the Olympics was
for work,
trashing reports suggesting
otherwise as "false" and "garbage".
But when his itinerary was released,
it showed his four-day trip contained
only several hours of work meetings
and a handful of meet-and-greets,
broken up by long segments
of personal and leisure time,
with his final day consisting
of just the gold medal game,
followed by his flight home.
And look, nothing against going
to Italy and getting a photo op.
A couple of years back,
every living comedian but me
pulled that same move,
and I hear they had a great time.
But the work-to-play ratio
seems a little off here.
And this was just the latest instance
of Patel seeming to use the FBI jet
for personal trips, which is a
little rich coming from him,
given, just over two years ago,
he sat down with Glenn Beck
and complained about his
predecessor's use of it like this.
Chris Wray doesn't need a government
funded G5 jet to go to vacation.
Maybe we ground that plane.
15,000 every time it takes off.
Just a thought.
Okay, so first, let me address
this man-cave.
Because it has everything to
hang out with the boys:
a chalkboard, a typewriter in a box,
a second camera in frame,
and most crucially, three
staggeringly different seating options.
You might all be talking,
but those pieces couldn't be less
in conversation with each other.
But more importantly, the FBI director
is actually required by law
to take the bureau's private plane.
But crucially,
if the travel is personal,
they're required
to reimburse the government,
though only for the cost
of a commercial flight.
And Patel's been using the jet
a lot since he took office,
to, among other things, go to
an exclusive golf resort in Scotland
for a getaway with friends,
and to travel to a Real American
Freestyle Wrestling event
where his girlfriend was
performing the national anthem.
He then flew to Texas to a resort
literally called the Boondoggle Ranch,
which'd be bad enough
even if it didn't happen
during the government shutdown,
and if he weren't hosted
by a Republican mega-donor named,
and this is true, Bubba Saulsbury.
Which sounds like either the name
of a baseball player from 1954
who was also in the Klan
or a dinner special at Denny's.
And when Patel and his
country-singer girlfriend
went on a podcast with Katie Miller,
who is Stephen Miller's,
and let me make sure
I've got this right, wife?
He offered up
this not-great defense.
It's ironic that they're saying,
you're going on vacation
or you're going
to see your girlfriend perform.
And if I was actually abusing it,
I would go see every one of her shows.
I think I get to like 15%.
So that's okay, then.
We all know it's not abuse
if you don't do it
as much as you technically could,
you deeply weird man.
If you're expecting me to show you
a clip of his girlfriend's music,
I refuse to do that,
I will just point out
that if you go to the YouTube page
for her song "Country Back",
about how she wants her country back,
and scroll down,
the top comment reads simply,
and went to listen to this?"
And I'd love to agree with
that except, again,
he didn't borrow the jet,
we all paid for it.
Thousands of dollars to take off.
Just a thought.
And the thing is, Patel's Olympic trip
wasn't even the first time
he's been accused
of treating work like a vacation.
Last May, he went to the U.K.
for a meeting of the "Five Eyes",
an intelligence alliance
with close English-speaking allies,
and also, by the way,
my high school nickname
when bullies determined
something stronger
than "four eyes" was required.
And while Patel's U.K. itinerary was
tightly packed with important meetings,
according to one senior official,
Patel wanted to move them
to more fun venues,
because, quote, "He wants
Premier soccer games."
"He wants to go jet skiing.
He'd like a helicopter tour."
His staff only cared about
three things:
what his meals were, when his
workouts would be,
and what his entertainment
would be.
The biggest plan is how he's going
to get his girlfriend in there
so she can go
to Windsor Castle.
Which feels like what a 15-year-old
boy thinks a trip to England is.
Soccer, jet ski with James
Bond's boss,
and take your girlfriend
to the castle.
I'm gonna show her the full
"Agent Cody Banks."
And it can seem like Patel's
much more interested
in the trappings of his job
than the job itself.
For instance, at one point
he ordered special, extra-large
"challenge coins" to hand out,
which looked like this.
And I assume he hands them out
after only the sickest quests,
like completing No Nut November
or failing anger management.
They look like the currency
you use to pay for a divorce.
But the thing is,
this fixation on optics
can make him very bad at his job.
Take what happened last September,
after Charlie Kirk was shot.
Within hours, Patel took to Twitter
to announce that,
"The subject for the horrific
shooting today is now in custody",
only to, 98 minutes later, have to
follow that with a tweet saying,
"The subject in custody
has been released."
And in the words of one FBI veteran,
"It wasn't a good look."
Which does make sense,
among other things,
Patel's first post sure made it sound
like people could stop worrying
about an armed shooter on the loose,
when that was not the case.
And yet, he stood by his actions.
Could I have had worded it a little
better in the heat of the moment?
Sure. But do I regret putting
it out? Absolutely not.
I was telling the world what
the FBI was doing as we were doing,
and I'm continuing to do that,
and I challenge anyone out there
to find a director
that has been more transparent
and more willing to work the media
on high-profile cases,
or any case the FBI is handling.
Okay, but the FBI director shouldn't be
"working the media" for likes.
You're supposed to be solving the case,
not providing running commentary.
There's a reason the CIA has never
sent out a press release saying,
"We think we found an alien!"
And then 90 minutes later
had to say,
"Never mind, it was just
a fucked up looking squirrel."
And the chaos in the Kirk investigation
continued once Patel landed in Utah.
Because according to one senior
leader in counterintelligence,
"Patel didn't have a raid jacket"
"and reportedly ordered people
to go find him one."
He needed a size medium.
They found him a female's jacket
that didn't have the patches
that he wanted,
so he had the SWAT team
taking their patches off
to put on his jacket before
he'd go to the press conference.
And sure enough,
that is what he then wore.
Now, I do have to tell you,
he disputes that account
and even went on Fox News
to "work the media" on the story.
I was honoring my men
and women at the FBI.
One of my agents handed me
a jacket and said,
"Boss, you should probably wear this,
we're going into the command center."
I said, I'd be honored to wear that.
And then another one handed
me the SWAT team badge of the unit
that was protecting the area
where Charlie was assassinated.
I wore that with pride.
I mean, okay.
Although, to be fair,
Kash wearing something
with pride isn't exactly a high bar,
given he might be the first FBI
director who has his own apparel line.
And yes, that is a logo featuring
Trump as the Punisher as Santa.
And yes, his hat does say
"K-dollar sign-H,"
which I do get is supposed
to stand for Kash,
but it makes him look like
he's in a shitty Kesha cover band.
But, wait, 'cause it gets even worse.
Because when Patel and his
then-deputy, Dan Bongino,
joined a conference call
about the shooting,
FBI officials were apparently
shocked by their fixation
on social media,
with one saying of Patel,
"He's screaming that he wants
to put stuff out,"
"but it's not even vetted yet.
It's not even accurate."
"Everyone on the call is just like:
This guy is out of control."
And let's just agree, you should
never be on any conference call
thinking,
"This guy is out of control."
At worst, you should be thinking,
"If I died right now,
would anyone notice?"
"Would anyone care?"
And it says something that,
by the time Kirk's alleged killer
turned himself in,
Utah's governor Spencer Cox had taken
the lead in handling the press,
with a source telling Fox
News that, quote,
"Letting Kash talk much could
fuck up the prosecution."
The point is, Patel seems
in way over his head.
But weirdly, Trump might
actually like that right now,
given that there are certain areas
where he might prefer loyalty
over competence.
Most notably, the Epstein case.
'Cause before Patel became
FBI director,
he insisted that the agency
could release
an alleged list of people Epstein
had trafficked underage girls to,
and he was incredulous that Republicans
hadn't already demanded that.
What the hell are the House
Republicans doing?
They have the majority.
You can't get the list?
You're gonna accept Dick
Durban's word
or whoever that guy is
as to who is on that list
and who isn't and that it can
and can't be released?
Put on your big boy pants and
let us know who the pedophiles are.
Wait!
"Put on your big boy pants?"
Not sure that's the language I'd use
to talk about catching pedophiles,
given it sounds more like
the slogan for a clothing line
started by Jared from Subway.
But Patel's now singing
a very different tune,
arguing there's no credible information
Epstein trafficked young women
to anyone beside himself.
And whenever the subject
of Trump's name
being in the files has come up,
things have been
noticeably tense.
Did you tell the attorney general
that the president's name
is in the Epstein files?
During many conversations
that the attorney general and I
have had on the matter
The question is simple:
did you tell the attorney general
that Donald Trump's name
is in the Epstein files. Yes or no?
- Why don't you try spelling it out.
- Yes or no?
- Use the alphabet.
- Yes or no?
No? ABCDEF?
You got him,
you got him so good.
By the way, later in that hearing,
a photo showed Patel holding a note
reading, "Good fight with Swalwell.
Hold the line."
And I don't know what would be
a more embarrassing explanation,
whether he wrote that note
to himself, or his mom wrote it
and slipped it in his
Tasmanian Devil lunchbox.
And his defensiveness there is striking
now the files are being released,
and Trump's name is all over them.
While that doesn't necessarily show
evidence of wrongdoing,
this week, NPR scrutinized the files
and revealed something odd.
The spotlight tonight on what's not
in the millions of Epstein files
released by the DOJ:
summaries and notes
from three separate interviews
the FBI conducted
with a Jeffrey Epstein accuser
who also made sex abuse allegations
against President Trump
in 2019.
Yeah, that looks pretty damning.
In fact, the only thing that could be
any more suspicious is if we eventually
find out that the night Epstein died,
Trump was caught buying a
bunch of rope at Home Depot.
And look, I'm not sure how
long Patel's gonna stay in this job.
Trump's reportedly displeased
with his Olympics "hijinks."
But as stupid as that locker
room footage is,
and it's very, very stupid,
it might actually be the perfect
encapsulation of his tenure at the FBI.
'Cause think about it: he's
in somewhere that he doesn't belong,
wearing something
that makes him look ridiculous,
and objectively having way
too good of a time.
And when all of this is said
and done, and he's eventually gone,
someone else is gonna have
to clean up his fucking mess.
And now, this.
And Now: The Dan Bongino
Show Is Back,
And It Is Weird As Fuck.
It is good to see you guys
and ladies out there.
It's been a crazy year.
For those of you watching
the show right now,
we are obviously live.
My watch, well, anybody
can set a time on a watch,
but you get the point,
I think it's fairly obvious.
And I'm gonna tell you something,
I ate this morning
for the first time in three days, and
man, I feel like a million dollars.
So, just throwing that out there.
Elbow's a little sore this morning.
I was putting on a shirt
the other day,
my elbow snapped back
and it is, like, killing me.
So, I had to take an Advil when
I got up. I'm like, what the hell?
Sorry, my eye getting a little red?
I feel like I have a little something
in my eye there.
You see how it's a little red
over there?
I know, I drink funny. I told you,
I got arthritis in my elbow.
Nothing like being a dad.
I don't have any boys.
I've got an older daughter
and a younger daughter
and they're pretty far apart.
I probably should've had one
in between and taken a shot.
I'm one of three boys.
I have a stepsister,
but I never had a boy.
Hey, Dick! Dicko! Dicky!
Dicko, did you see that?
They call you Dicko, your friends?
Dicky, Dicko, something like?
Some of my friends call me Dano,
maybe they call him Dicko,
I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know.
You don't have to, like, speculate
That was my plastic cigar.
Don't get distracted because
if there's a "there" there,
don't get into another
"there" that's not there,
because it takes away from
the "there" that's there.
Do you get my point?
Moving on. Our main story tonight
concerns the police.
The main thing Steven Seagal
pretends to be,
aside from "a guy whose hair
is naturally black."
I'm sorry, but the only way you get
that color
is by dunking your head
into a vat of printer ink.
Specifically, we're gonna talk about
a tool police use
that's responsible for, among
other things, this incredible story.
A shocking scene for kids
at a Chuck E. Cheese.
One minute they are just
having fun
and then all of a sudden
police rush in
and put Chuck E. Cheese
in handcuffs.
- We're gonna detain the mouse, dude.
- Yes, we are.
539, we have one detained.
He's a suspect.
He stole someone's card here
and has been using it, someone
that was one of your employees
like last week or something
like that, so, yeah.
No, Chuck E.! No!
There is a lot going on there!
From the kid screaming
"Chuck E., no!"
to the phrase, "We're gonna
detain the mouse, dude,"
which sounds like what
an ICE agent would say
if Fievel tried to immigrate
to America today.
That arrest is one of many videos
we've only been able to see
thanks to police body cameras, the
devices that give us a nipples-eye view
of law enforcement's interactions
with the public.
They are ubiquitous now, but
body cams are still fairly new.
As recently as 2013, only a third
of police departments had them.
But by 2020, 79% of officers
reported working in departments
with body-worn cameras,
to the point it's been said
that they represent
the largest new investment
in policing in a generation.
And body cams have been viewed
as a popular solution
to problems regarding transparency
in law enforcement,
which may be why a key
Democratic demand right now
for ending the shutdown of funding
to DHS involves this catchy phrase.
We want there to be masks off,
body cameras on.
Masks off, body cameras on.
We want masks off,
body cameras on.
Stirring stuff.
That is the leader
of the opposition there.
And that is truly
the best he's got.
Honestly, you could set a
white noise machine
to "fiery Chuck Schumer speech",
and get a full eight hours.
And the truth is, body cams
can seem like a great tool
for increasing accountability
and building trust.
And cops themselves tend
to value them too,
though for slightly different
reasons than the rest of us,
as for them, it's more about reducing
frivolous or false complaints.
In fact, according to a 2018 survey,
while just 34% of local police
and sheriffs' offices said
they acquired body-worn cameras
to reduce use of force,
nearly 80% wanted them in order
to do things like
"improve officer safety,
increase evidence quality,"
"reduce civilian complaints,
and reduce agency liability."
And look, ideally, you can
have all of those things.
In fact, as this police
captain in Virginia sees it,
the best-case scenario for body cams
is them improving everyone's behavior.
When a camera is present,
everyone acts a little bit better.
So, perhaps this is an opportunity
for us to de-escalate an incident.
If something is very escalated, it'll
be a reminder to everyone involved,
to include the officers and the public
that a camera's present
and hopefully that we all
are acting a little better,
a little more civil to each other.
Well, that certainly sounds
nice, doesn't it?
Although "when a camera's present,
everyone acts a bit better"
is an observation from someone who
clearly doesn't watch reality TV,
a world in which a camera's presence
is your cue
to throw a glass of pinot grigio
into someone's face
and call them a whore
in the middle of a nice restaurant.
Still, that notion that body
cams can be a way
of calming down interactions
with law enforcement is appealing,
and it may be why it seems
we're about to slap them
on the chests of all ICE agents
across the country
in the name of accountability.
But the thing is, the more
you look into body cams,
the more you realize they are only
effective if they're used properly,
and in many cases,
they are just not.
So, given that, tonight,
let's talk about body cams.
And let's start with the fact
that straight away,
there are certain limitations
to what they can tell us,
as, because of their field of view,
they can't capture
the full context
of everything going on.
And while I think you probably
already get that,
just watch as this Today show
reporter demonstrates it
in the weirdest possible way.
Seth is putting on a body camera.
My producer, Jovana, is off to the
side, shooting from a distance,
on her iPhone, to give us the complete
picture, like a bystander would.
Scenario one, something Seth
calls deceptive intensity.
Watch this body camera footage
closely. What's happening here?
All right. Now let's look from
the bystander's iPhone.
That's right. No brawl here.
Just really bad dancing.
Okay, I will admit, that
demonstration was effective
because the body cam footage
did look like a violent brawl,
when we now know,
they were in fact doing
a Richard Simmons workout
at each other.
And that's not the only weird
demonstration like that.
Interpretation can be very
misleading.
For example, you, the viewer at home,
can only see me from the chest up.
You have no idea
what's in my hand.
However, the view from a second
camera may show
that I'm holding what
appears to be a gun,
when in reality,
I'm just holding a flashlight.
Okay, I'll be honest, that felt
less like a local news segment
and more like the routine of the
world's worst birthday magician.
Gather around kids!
For my first trick, you probably
think I have a gun in my hand,
but it's actually a flashlight!
What's that?
Your parents want their money back?
No problem! Here's their money
or is it actually another flashlight!
But those examples, while ridiculous,
do show how hard it can be
to interpret
what's captured on video.
But the audio
can be deceptive as well.
Take this example from Florida,
where the shouts of officers
wound up shaping
a very misleading narrative.
Officers were wearing
body-worn cameras,
and they were chasing
after an individual.
He walked over to the sidewalk,
and laid down on the sidewalk,
spread-eagled.
And you can hear on
the body-worn camera footage
officers screaming, you know,
"Stop resisting!"
We will ice you!
Get your hands behind you!
Stop resisting!
He claimed that
they beat him unnecessarily,
nobody believed him until that video
from the nearby building came out.
Yeah, they're yelling "stop resisting"
when he wasn't resisting at all.
It can be powerful to claim
something's happening
that the camera cannot see.
It'd be like me telling you
that under this desk
I've got the thighs of a bodybuilder
and an ass that won't quit.
When the truth is, I've got two
perfectly average thighs
and an ass that quits all the time.
And that's not a one-off.
A similar situation happened in
the beating death of Tyre Nichols,
where the audio on officers' body
cams picked them up saying
things like, "Lay flat,"
only for another video to emerge
showing him lying limp
as an officer handcuffed him.
The point is, there are immediately
limits to what a camera can show you.
But those limitations
get even more acute
when cops mute, obscure,
or turn off their cameras.
Which happens, and sometimes,
on purpose.
And that is something driven home
by this incident,
where a police captain who was
arrested for drunk driving
kept trying to convey something
to the officer who pulled him over.
- You've been drinking tonight?
- I just got a ride.
You've being drinking tonight, sir.
I'm a captain
in the police department.
- What police department?
- Oklahoma City.
Turn the camera off.
How much have you had
to drink tonight, sir?
Turn your camera off, please.
- Turn your camera off.
- I'm not turning my camera off.
Yeah, that is a police captain
whispering, "Turn your camera off,"
while simultaneously
staring into it
like a raccoon
caught on a Ring doorbell.
And it is genuinely hard to imagine
a more embarrassing way
to get arrested than that,
which is saying something
because you just saw someone
get handcuffed
while dressed like a giant mouse.
It makes sense that these
things have an off button,
cops need to be able to take a shit
in peace like the rest of us.
Some of the people they talk to might
need their privacy protected, too.
That is why Connecticut, for instance,
has a law that says
they have to turn cameras
off in cases like
"during an encounter with an undercover
officer or informant,"
"when an officer is on break
or engaged in personal business,"
"and when a person is undergoing a
medical or psychological evaluation."
But obviously,
some critical interactions,
when people have been hurt or
killed by police, still go unrecorded.
While you might think, "Maybe
the incident escalated suddenly"
"and officers didn't have time
to turn their cameras on,"
you should know, most body cams are
basically always in a standby mode
in which the camera is powered on
and rolling,
but not yet permanently
saving the footage.
It's only when an officer presses
record
that the camera will begin saving
footage to permanent memory.
That saved clip
then includes footage recorded
for a predetermined amount
of "buffer time"
before the record button was pressed,
which can range from 15 seconds
to two minutes.
So, there's actually a meaningful
amount of context
that can get captured prior to an
officer hitting record
if that's something
they're inclined to do.
And yet, oftentimes,
they just happen to be turned off
during incidents
of police violence.
For example, even though the LAPD
requires officers
to turn on their cameras before
any interaction with the public,
nearly a fourth of its officers
involved in incidents
where serious force was used failed
to activate them in a timely manner.
Some unions and police officials
are quick to excuse that sort of thing.
For instance, not long after
Houston rolled out body cams,
two police officers shot
a man near a gas station,
but neither turned on their cameras
until the incident was over.
And this is how the police union's
then-president defended that.
This was the first real high-profile
test of this department's
body-worn camera policy.
Pass or fail?
If the officer's primary responsibility
was his safety, he passed.
If his primary responsibility was
videotaping the scene, he failed.
If he was your cameraman and only
had to worry about videotaping that,
I would blame that cameraman
for not getting it.
But that's not his primary
responsibility.
His primary responsibility
is to make sure he's safe
and the public's safe.
Okay, but he did shoot someone.
My cameraman gets footage
and has never shot anyone.
While doing this job, at least.
I don't know what Dante does during
his off-hours, that's his time.
Also, activating a body camera isn't
exactly an overwhelming task.
We looked into it, and the process is,
step one: press the record button,
step two: end of steps.
But even if an officer
does turn on their camera,
and even if it shows
what happened clearly,
there's still the issue of
what happens to all the footage.
Because to be clear, there is
an enormous amount of it.
To give you a sense of scale, Axon,
the nation's largest
police camera provider,
offers cloud storage for many
of its clients' footage.
And its database is more than 100
petabytes of footage,
equivalent to more than 5,000 years
of high-definition video.
Which is pretty wild, isn't it,
both that there is so much of it,
and also that "petabyte"
is a real unit of digital storage
and not what it sounds like, a snack
food brand exclusively for pedophiles.
"Pedo Bite: have a snack,
you fuckin' monster!"
Most of that footage
will never be watched by anyone,
which is understandable.
It's impossible for agencies
to look at every minute of footage
from all these cameras.
But far too often, even footage
that documents misconduct
isn't meaningfully reviewed,
meaninging departments miss
opportunities to spot
both problem officers and
broader patterns of abuse.
After the murder of George Floyd,
it emerged that body cams
had captured Derek Chauvin
kneeling on the necks of others,
including a handcuffed Black woman
and a 14-year-old Black boy.
In both those cases, supervisors
had access to the recordings
yet cleared Chauvin's conduct.
And when a state civil rights
investigation later looked at
"700 hours of body cam footage,"
it found Minneapolis cops repeatedly
used neck restraints,
and concluded that if police
or the city
had conducted a substantive audit
of the footage, they would have seen
how often officers there were using
neck restraints,
and could have taken steps
to stop it.
And clearly,
someone should've done that.
There's no point in the police stacking
up thousands of hours of footage
that nobody's ever going to see.
Especially given that we all know,
that is Paramount+'s job.
What're they gonna do?
Take us over and immediately
cancel us? I'm genuinely asking.
Internally, departments aren't reviewing
their own footage nearly enough.
When it comes to public transparency,
the results have been all over the map.
And you might be thinking,
"Why not just put all the footage
out there for everyone to see?"
The thing is, there are legitimate
reasons not to do that.
First, there are issues
with how all that video
could be fed
into facial recognition systems,
which we have talked about before.
But also, remember,
body cams can show vulnerable
or embarrassing moments,
which can be exploited
for entertainment.
And I know we've already showed you
a couple of examples of that tonight.
But we thought a lot about
why we were doing that and how.
In the mouse one,
his face is covered.
And in the police captain one,
you might've noticed,
he was a police captain.
But there are countless channels
on YouTube that've made a business
out of obtaining body cam
footage of people in distress,
and which do feel like
they're leaning into exploitation.
One channel has videos called
"Entitled Lady Finally Gets
What She Deserves,"
and "Buckle Up Kids,
Grandma's Drunk,"
which sounds like a kids book
written by Kathie Lee Gifford.
Another channel has videos, mainly
of young women, with titles like
"19-Year-Old Girl Arrested for DUI
at Over Double the Limit"
"After Getting Drunk at the Beach,"
which is pretty grim.
And by the way, we've blurred faces
there, but they don't do that.
And it almost makes me think
that YouTube as a whole
might not've been worth it,
offsetting its real accomplishments
like this video
of a chihuahua riding a turtle,
or this one of Kelsey Grammer
falling off a stage,
or this one of a sheep
screaming like a human.
Yeah, that might be the best
thing ever posted to YouTube,
and if you're thinking,
"John, what about the several hundred
episodes of your show?"
I said what I said.
Now, those channels often get videos
through public records requests.
But police departments
can have a huge amount of leeway
when it comes to what they release,
as in most places,
policymakers have defaulted to leaving
them with the power to decide
what's recorded, who can see it,
and when.
Just watch as a reporter
asked Charlotte's then-police chief
how to reconcile his commitment
to transparency,
with his department's refusal
to release video of a police shooting.
You seem to give
mixed messages here.
On the one hand you're saying
we should have full transparency,
on the other hand you're saying
you're not gonna release the video.
How can you square
those two things?
The idea of full transparency is
release the videos so we can see it.
Sure, I appreciate your passion,
but I never said full transparency.
I said transparency. And transparency
is in the eye of the beholder.
Wait!
"Transparency is in the eye
of the beholder"?
That is just fully nonsense.
That sounds like the last thoughts
of a pigeon
that's about to smash
into a closed window.
And yet that has been the de facto
stance of many departments.
For example, even though
in 2020 the NYPD promised
to release footage of "critical
incidents" within 30 days,
when ProPublica looked into it
three years later,
they found that,
out of 380 such incidents,
the NYPD had released footage
within a month just twice.
And in South Carolina,
when the police there had killed
at least 19 people in 2023,
they'd only released footage
in three of those cases,
with one department refusing
a request by saying,
"We never release that footage."
And a popular argument police use
is that making video public
would undermine
the integrity of an investigation.
It's an excuse which works in almost
every state in the country,
even when there's rules
for public access.
They'll also argue
that reviewing the footage,
and redacting sensitive information,
like juveniles' faces or witnesses'
identities, carries a prohibitive cost.
In Las Vegas, police charged about
70 dollars an hour to produce footage,
while in Memphis,
journalists have been asked to pay
as much as 3,100 dollars
in hourly labor costs
for video from a single case.
And as one expert said,
"For a local news organization, a bill
for 2,000 might as well be a denial."
Which does make sense,
doesn't it?
Local news are known
for a lot of things:
dedicated employees,
probing investigations,
inadvertently broadcasting massive
dicks on their weather maps,
but they're not famous
for rolling in money.
And even if footage gets released,
it can be so heavily redacted
it's then essentially useless.
For example, until last year,
Tempe, Arizona's police
department had a policy
which mandated that all
body cam footage they released
would "include
a general medium blur."
And just so you know, this is what
their blurred footage looks like.
And it is notable that,
when body cam footage
shows officers in a bad light,
they will often cite the cost
and technical hurdles of redaction
to not release it.
But when it shows them
in a good light,
those problems seem to disappear.
Just watch as a reporter in Texas
confronts a police chief,
who was claiming that,
because they didn't have the ability
to redact video themselves,
they couldn't release a video of
a police search during a traffic stop.
In the year 2024,
why doesn't this department have
software to redact videos?
It's really expensive for us to get.
Angleton chief Lupe Valdez
showed us a quote
from their body cam vendor:
more than 14,000 dollars.
Budget-wise, it's not
in our budget to do that.
But there's this:
body cam video Angleton police
released a few months ago
of a crash where officers heroically
pulled a driver out of the burning car.
And look, portions are blurred.
How were you able to redact
the video in that case?
- We paid somebody to do that.
- So, let me get this straight.
When your officers are heroes,
you find a way to release it,
but when your officers are scrutinized,
you find a way to withhold it?
- No, sir.
- That's what happened here, chief.
No, sir.
Yes, sir.
That is exactly what happened.
That interview could not have been
any more embarrassing for him.
Which is why I'm sure he'd prefer
if we blurred him right now,
but I'm not gonna do that,
because, much like him,
I only pay people to redact video
when I fucking feel like it.
But maybe no case illustrates
the extent to which
the mere presence of body cams
isn't sufficient
to prevent police violence,
or indeed bring accountability,
more than that of Ronald Greene,
a Louisiana man
who died following an encounter
with police in 2019.
Officers initially told his family
that he'd died on impact
after crashing his car
at the end of a chase with police.
And even though there was body cam
footage from officers on the scene,
state officials,
including the then-governor,
repeatedly refused to publicly
release it for more than two years.
In the end, someone wound up
leaking the video to the AP,
which is how people came to see
a state trooper
"wrestling Greene to the ground,
putting him in a chokehold"
"and punching him in the face."
And I'm not gonna show you
the video of any of that.
But I do think it's worth
seeing one moment,
from one of the officers' body cams,
as he drove away from the scene.
And I beat
the ever-living fuck out of him,
choked him, and everything else,
trying to get him under control.
And then all of a sudden,
he just went limp.
Yeah, I thought he was dead.
We sat him up real quick,
he's on the ambulance
en route to Lynwood,
and I'm hauling ass
trying to catch up to him.
You think you,
y'all got it on body cam?
Yeah, as soon as he was reminded
his body camera was on,
he turned it off.
Which is pretty damning!
It is honestly the panicked move
of someone whose internal
monologue was essentially just this.
Yeah, exactly.
None of the six officers
on the scene
wound up facing much
in the way of charges.
The guy in that video wound up dying
the following year in a car crash.
As for the other five, only two
were convicted on any charges,
and those were misdemeanors
plead down,
but charges against
the other three were dismissed,
and the DOJ dropped its criminal
investigation, saying
it had "found insufficient evidence
to support federal charges."
But that might be because, even
though there was body cam footage,
the microphones weren't always on,
and not all of the troopers
at the scene
had their cameras on
during the arrest.
And that does not seem
like a coincidence.
Because the AP found state troopers
there had made a habit
of turning off or muting
body cams during pursuits,
that when footage is recorded,
the agency routinely refused
to release it,
and one supervisor in the department
even told internal investigators
that it was his "common practice"
to rubber-stamp officers'
use-of-force reports
without reviewing body cam video.
And if you're not even
gonna watch the footage,
why give your officers
body cams at all?
You might as well just let them
hang a baloney sandwich
off their shirt instead.
It'll lead to exactly
as much accountability
and they'll have a little meat
snack in case they get hungry.
If someone
hadn't leaked that footage,
we'd likely never have known
about any of this.
But hoping for leaks just
cannot be the system here.
So, what do we do?
I would argue we have to take back
the power from police departments
to decide
when and how to use body cams.
Some agencies are transitioning
to "auto-triggering technologies",
like sensors that switch them on
when officers do things
like draw their gun
or exit their police car.
Experts told us those
aren't necessarily bad ideas,
but they're likely to fall flat
if they aren't combined
with clear, enforceable rules
stating the footage must be retained,
routinely reviewed,
and released in a timely manner,
especially in critical incidents.
One way of doing that
is to have those rules enforced
by an independent body,
free of police influence.
And all of this is really
worth bearing in mind
during the current debate
over requiring federal agents
to wear body cams
during immigration enforcement.
Because it's worth remembering
a pretty important fact
about the officers
in the Alex Pretti shooting.
Customs and Border Protection
officers involved in the deadly shooting
were wearing body cameras.
The agency says
the footage is preserved
but it's unclear when or whether
the public's going to see it.
Can I ask you a question,
why isn't it automatic
that the body camera footage
would eventually be released?
You would think it would be,
here, though,
the Trump administration has resisted
cooperation with any investigation,
and George, remember that
they've already drawn a conclusion
that the shooting was justified.
Yeah, they still haven't released
the body cam footage,
kind of rendering that whole
"masks off, body cams on" slogan
pretty toothless.
Though, to be fair, I guess
"masks off, body cams on,"
"and operating under clear guidelines
about when footage is released"
"and overseen by an independent body
to ensure maximum transparency"
isn't quite as catchy.
And if Chuck Schumer tries to say it,
I think his head might explode.
The point is, the reason
we know what happened to Alex Pretti
isn't because of body cams,
it's because of all the other people
with cell phones filming what happened.
And that
is going to need to continue.
Because until
we see significant changes,
body cams will just never
live up to their promise
of shining a real light
on misconduct.
And if you need a visual metaphor
for a light being shined on things,
don't worry,
because I have in my hand,
and this may surprise you,
a flashlight!
That's our show, thank you
so much for watching,
we'll see you next week,
good night!
Don't blur me!
Don't blur me!
I don't want to be blurred!