Do You Know Why You Stopped Me?: Information and Injury in the Fight Against Racialized Policing

• Author: Brett Graham
• Position: J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2021. B.A., University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, 2018
• Pages: 265-281

Do You Know Why You Stopped Me?: Information

and Injury in the Fight Against Racialized Policing

BRETT GRAHAM*

“Data is a precious thing and will last longer than the systems themselves.”

—Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

I. THE LANDSCAPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267

A. Behind Undocumented Encounters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268

B. The Scope of the Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

C. Current Efforts at Data Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271

II. THE INJURY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273

III. THE RECEIPTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

A. Test Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276

B. The Case for Stop Receipts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279

C. The Case Against Stop Receipts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280

IV. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281

INTRODUCTION

In many ways, the fight against racialized policing is a fight over information—

and so far, for those interested in reform, it has been David against Goliath.

Take, for instance, the complicated and still-nascent story of body-worn cameras.

It goes something like this: In 2014, owing largely to a statement made by the family

* J.D., Georgetown University Law Center, 2021. B.A., University of Michigan—Ann Arbor,2018.

Articles Editor, Georgetown Journal of Law and Modern Critical Race Perspectives, 2020-21. I would like to

express my profound thanks to the incredible staff at MCRP for their diligent work in preparing this piece for

publication. Additionally, given the subject matter of this Note, I must recognize my immense privilege, as a

cisgender white man who works in a field that is too often defined by institutional barriers and social stratifica-

tion. I strive to continue writing, thinking, and researching in ways that ensure that this privilege erodes and,

eventually, disappears. © 2022, Brett Graham.

265

of Michael Brown,

1

German Lopez, Michael Brown’s family said police should adopt body cameras. They’re right., VOX (Nov.

14, 2014, 10:04 AM), https://www.vox.com/2014/8/16/6023481/michael-mike-brown-ferguson-body-

cameras.

an 18-year-old Black man fatally shot by Officer Darren Wilson

in Ferguson, Missouri, police departments across the country began strapping cam-

eras to their officers’ chests.

2

The idea was that having all of these law enforcement

interactions on video would promote transparency, accountability, trust, and civi-

lity.

3

Observers and scholars celebrated this revolutionary development. They had

finally answered the age-old question, “Who watches the watchers?”

4

Mitchell Zamoff et al., Who Watches the Watchmen: Evidence of the Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on New

York City Policing (2019), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3770333_code1334789.

pdf?abstractid=3490785&mirid=1&type=2.

Then, roughly six years later, Officer Derek Chauvin’s body-worn camera would

be “on and activated” for the nine minutes that he spent kneeling on a Black man’s

neck.

5

Louise Matsakis, Body Cameras Haven’t Stopped Police Brutality. Here’s Why, WIRED (June 17, 2020,

12:41 PM), https://www.wired.com/story/body-cameras-stopped-police-brutality-george-floyd/.

Footage from that camera would not see the light of day until months after

George Floyd had become a household name. Even then, its availability depended

upon a contentious court order.

6

So much for accountability and civility. Some

commentators began to stir, realizing that their revolutionary development had

not been all that revolutionary—after all, the “vast majority of [body-worn cam-

era] footage never gets seen.”

7

Rob Verger, Police body cameras were supposed to build trust. So far, they haven’t., POPULAR SCIENCE

(June 10, 2020, 8:00 PM), https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/police-body-cameras/.

Countless jurisdictions reported incidents where

cameras had simply been turned off;

8

Megan Cassidy, San Francisco police turned off body cameras before raid on journalist, memo says, S.F.

CHRONICLE (June 18, 2020, 5:27 PM), https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/San-Francisco-police-

turned-off-body-cameras-15349795.php; Tom Latek, Beshear: ‘Unacceptable’ officers had body cameras turned

off when Louisville man was fatally shot by police, N. KY. TRIBUNE (June 2, 2020), https://www.nkytribune.

com/2020/06/beshear-unacceptable-officers-had-body-cameras-turned-off-louisville-man-fatally-shot-by-

police/; Phillip Jackson, TBI report reveals when MPD officers turned off cameras before officer-involved

shooting, MEMPHIS COM. APPEAL (Sept. 20, 2019, 6:34 PM), https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/

news/2019/09/20/tbi-report-memphis-police-officers-turned-body-cameras-off-before-shooting-martavious-

banks-sep-2018/2379112001/.

and even for the footage that was properly

recorded and stored, access depended on navigating a complex web of state and

local policies.

9

But lack of access was not the only Achilles heel of the body-worn camera scheme.

It also suffered from the fact that inherent to its very concept is an understanding of

injury that is, as this Note will argue, outdated. Moreover, it functions to keep the

public—and particularly, communities of color—woefully under-informed about

how law enforcement actually functions in America.

Solving the problem of racialized policing must start with solving the problem of

systemic under-information about policing. Embedded in the logic of the body-

1.

2. Justin Nix, Natalie Todak & Brandon Tregle, Understanding Body-Worn Camera Diffusion is U.S.

Policing, POLICE QUARTERLY 2 (2020).

3. See id.

4.

5.

6. Id.

7.

8.

9. See Verger, supra note 7.

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