| NEWS | ‘Piss Poor’ from p 14 police said were found at the scene of the shooting are displayed, though there’s no indication that the rocks were thrown by Osman. He was standing in a small strip of gravel along 19th Avenue. Samples taken by attorneys for Osman’s family show that most of the rocks of the area are an inch or two in length. “How can we call this transparency?” said Percy Christian, an activist with Black Lives Matter Phoenix Metro, which has demanded that Phoenix police publicly release the full footage of the shooting death. The release of only small portions of the video was “really not giving the public and the city of Phoenix the opportunity to see and make up our own minds about the injustice that happened,” Christian added. For Bryce Newell, a professor of media law and policy at the University of Oregon who has studied body camera policy exten- sively, the Phoenix Police Department’s policy of releasing packaged, selectively edited videos is an example of how law enforcement agencies attempt to control the narrative after a police killing. Newell said the “critical incident briefing” of Osman’s killing is “very polished.” “Clearly, this is trying to frame and anchor a narrative in the way that the police department would like it to be framed,” Newell said. Still, he noted, Phoenix police did not attempt to justify the killing as overtly as he had seen done at other law enforcement agencies. At the end of the video, Bower noted that the inci- dent is subject to an internal investigation and criminal probe. Although Newell said that the release of bodycam footage can, in some cases, raise privacy concerns, he saw little reason for not releasing it in this incident. Osman’s death occurred in a public place, not in a private home. Osman’s family has advo- cated for the full footage to be released. “I don’t see much, from my perspective, that would make me want to say, well, we should hold back on giving access to every- thing right away. It seems to me that this would be a case where full access would be in the public interest,” Newell said. Michael White, a criminology professor at Arizona State University who has worked with police agencies on body camera implementation, said that videos that provided additional context were generally “a good way to go.” Sometimes, important context is missing from raw footage, he said. Or there can be so much footage — if multiple officers are on the scene for hours, for example — that it can be difficult for people to sort through. “I think there are a lot of upsides to it. 16 The downside is that if you have a police department in a community where there’s some mistrust or antagonism, you’re going to have some community members who are going to view that as not being Phoenix Police Department Phoenix police Sgt. Brian Bower narrates a video that includes footage of a September 24 incident in which two officers shoot and kill Ali Osman. sufficient,” White said. “They’re going to want to see the whole thing, and the department’s refusal to release the whole footage may be viewed like they’re trying to hide something.” A ‘Slanted’ Narrative? For some in Phoenix, the sense that the worst may not yet have been provided to the public rings true. Christian said that the dispatch audio that was released was disturbing on its own. “So I can’t imagine what the other things that they redacted are,” he added. Jared Keenan, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, said he opposed the department’s policy of releasing limited bodycam footage and the often slow process of releasing the full footage through public records requests. “This undermines the entire purpose of bodycams,” Keenan said. “It’s hard to see this policy in any other way than as an after-the-fact way of justifying any use of force that they engage in.” The narrative, he said, was “slanted and one-sided.” As media outlets, including New Times, wait for the department to process their requests for the full footage, the depart- ment’s own video has set the narrative. But the impending lawsuit over Osman’s death — and his family’s quest for answers — may ultimately change that. So far, though, Christian and those who have been calling for police reforms in Phoenix for years are frustrated at the silence of city officials after the release of the video. “It shows how desensitized our city officials are to the slaying of Black men, unarmed men of color in this city,” he said. “It doesn’t even pierce their hearts anymore,” Christian added. OCT 27TH–NOV 2ND, 2022 PHOENIX NEW TIMES | MUSIC | CAFE | FILM | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | FEATURE | NEWS | OPINION | FEEDBACK | CONTENTS | phoenixnewtimes.com