Body camera….worn by police officers to assure us that they are doing their job correctly and making sure every decision they make is lawful. In certain circumstances, it allows the public to view the decisions of the officer and whether that judgment is lawful or not. It can cause an uproar, and that’s exactly what happened in North Carolina. So how is the state of North Carolina going to deal with this uproar now the video is out for the public eye? Well, it’s none of our business from now on… literally.

If you don’t know what happened in North Carolina, here is a brief overview of the incident. Keith Scott was shot and killed on September 20th. Within five days after his shooting, the riot crowd demanded that the police department release body cam footage of the incident to the public. Police Chief Kerr Putney's initial response was not to release the video to avoid the pressure from the public. The chief already had his phone blowing up with questions on why he didn’t release the video in the first place, but after the release of another video provided by one of Scott’s family members, calls for the police to release the body camera video increased further. Despite his decision, this may be one of the final times that a police chief will crack under the pressure from the public — Going into effect on October 1st, a new law is set to block the public from obtaining comparable kinds of recordings from body cameras as well as dashboard cameras. This decision caused the rioters in North Carolina to start the chant “No tapes, No peace.”

While I do understand where the rioters are coming from, wanting the video straight from the camera to see what happened in that situation we again need to realize that one viewpoint of a video does not always tell the entire story. We also need to realize in these types of situation’s the police department is not only thinking about the safety of the people who would go to the extreme to express their opinions about what is happen, the chief is thinking about the lives of his officers, as he should — especially if the officer is pronounced innocent, which we don’t know what is going to happen.

My opinion is that they should keep the video private… until they go to court. Then present the video in front of the jury, in front of the judge and then let the decision go from there rather than seeing the video ahead of time then having a prejudice decision already in mind before the trial, but you know…