Ethos: ethical appeal.

Pathos: emotional appeal.

Logos: logical appeal.
On October 14, 2007, a middle-aged man was growing irate at the arrivals
terminal of the Vancouver International Airport. Robert Dziekanski had been stuck in
the airport for 10 hours with a visa problem, unable to find his older mother. He
couldnt speak Englishcouldnt speak any language other than Polish. So, frustrated or
delirious, he had begun throwing furniture to the ground.
Four members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived to investigate the
commotion. One of them gave Dziekanski an instruction in English. Its unclear whether
he complied, and it hardly mattered: Less than 25 seconds after getting to the scene,
Corporal Benjamin Robinson, the senior officer present, ordered his team to use a stun
gun on Dziekanski.
The police tased Dziekanski five times. He screamed, collapsed, and writhed on the
floor. Instead of letting him sit up to catch his new breath, the officers forced his face
against the ground as they tried to handcuff him. He resisted, then stopped fighting.
When paramedics arrived minutes later, they could not revive him. Dziekanskis heart
had stopped.
A couple hundred feet away, a Canadian named Paul Pritchard was recording the
incident on his phone. His videowhich was confiscated by police, and which he only
reclaimed through litigationdid not match the police report.
The police and Pritchards video were so different as to resemble alternate worlds. The
police had claimed three men approached Dziekanski. The video showed four. The
police had claimed that Dziekanski was reaching for something on a desk when he was
tased, as if preparing to assault the officers. The video showed he wasnt. The police said
they couldnt have pepper-sprayed Dziekanski, as too many other people were nearby.
The video showed that a plexiglass wall separated Dziekanski and the officers from
anyone else in the airport.
The video made a difference.
Just last month, Benjamin Robinson was found guilty of perjury.
***

Three days ago, a local newspaper in South Carolina reported the police explanation for
the shooting death of an unarmed black man, Walter Scott, as he fled from a routine
traffic stop in the town of North Charleston. From The Post and Courier:
A statement released by North Charleston police spokesman Spencer Pryor said a man
ran on foot from the traffic stop and an officer deployed his department-issued Taser in
an attempt to stop him.
That did not work, police said, and an altercation ensued as the men struggled over the
device. Police allege that during the struggle the man gained control of the Taser and
attempted to use it against the officer.
The officer then resorted to his service weapon and shot him, police alleged.
The Post and Courier also quoted a confused cousin of Scotts: Hes not a violent guy
never seen him argue with anybody. I just cant see it, Samuel Scott told the paper.
Then, on Tuesday, both The Post and Courier and The New York Timesobtained videos
of the shooting. They showed a different story.
The video shows the officer, Michael T. Slager, shooting Scott as he runs away. Slager
does not start firingeight times, at Scott's backuntil Scott is fleeing. The video then
shows Slager dropping an object on Scotts body. It isn't clear whether this object is a
stun gun. Finally, the video shows sets of officers arriving on the scene in the minutes
after the shooting, and it shows none of them attempting CPR.
On Tuesday evening, Slager was charged with murder.
***
In the past year, after the killings of Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, many police
departments and police reformists have agreed on the necessity of police-worn body
cameras. Body cams seem to be good for everyone. By creating a better record of officercitizen interactions, the argument goes, they protect cops from unfounded accusations
and give citizens a kind of justice insurance policy.
But the most powerful cameras arent those on officers bodies. Theyre those wielded by
bystanders.
We dont yet know who shot these videos of Slager, who carried these tools of witness.
But unknown cameramen and women lived out high democratic ideals: They watched a

cop kill someone, shoot recklessly at someone running away, and they kept the camera
trained on the cop. They were there, on an ordinary, hazy Saturday morning, and they
chose to be courageous. They bore witness, at unknown risk to themselves.

Which isnt to say that civilian-held cameras are always effective at securing a
conviction. Despite the fact that the world can now see Eric Garner being killed by an
illegal chokeholddespite the fact that New York City Police Department banned
chokeholds years agofilm of the incident did not result in the officer, Daniel Pantaleo,
being charged. But thanks to the efforts of Ramsey Orta, who filmed Garners death, we
know.
We have been talking about police brutality for years. And now, because of videos, we
are seeing just how systemic and widespread it is, tweeted Deray McKesson, an activist
in Ferguson, after the videos emerged Tuesday night. The videos over the past seven
months have empowered us to ask deeper questions, to push more forcefully in
confronting the system.
Pics or it didnt happen is a terrible motto for a justice system. Nor can accountability
for police officers rely on someone always standing nearby with a smartphone. But the
process of ascertaining the truth of the world has to start somewhere. A video is one
more assertion made about what is real. Today, through some unknown heros
stubborn internal choice to witness instead of flee, to press record and to watch
something terrible unfold, we have one more such assertion of reality.