Protect bystanders who record police

DEBRA GOODMAN

Let no one forget: If not for the fact that a bystander with a camera phone captured Eric Garner’s confrontation with cops — and that the video then found its way to the Daily News — Garner’s death might have ended up like most all of the other approximately 1,000 complaints of chokeholds filed at the Civilian Complaint Review Board over the last five years: unsubstantiated allegations of police abuse.

Instead, the officer who placed Garner in an apparent chokehold had his gun taken away and was placed on modified duty; another police officer was placed on desk duty, and four paramedics and EMTs were placed on modified duty. Moreover, the CCRB is revisiting those 1,000 “unsubstantiated” chokehold complaints, and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has pledged to overhaul police training.

It all happened because we could see, with our own eyes, a deeply disturbing, violent encounter between cops and an unarmed man

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/protect-bystanders-record-police-article-1.1880560