Video recorded by police dashcams has driven debate in recent news stories in the Aiken area.
After waiting nearly two years, Aiken area residents last week finally caught a glimpse of dashcam footage from the patrol car of Justin Craven, the former North Augusta police officer who for about 15 minutes pursued Ernest Satterwhite Sr.
Craven ultimately fatally shot Satterwhite Sr. in the driveway of his Edgefield County home in February 2014.
Also in 2014, mounted dashcam from an Aiken Department of Public Safety patrol vehicle captured the audio and partial visual from a traffic stop that a lawsuit says included a public cavity search of Aiken resident Elijah Pontoon in broad daylight.
In both the Satterwhite and Pontoon cases, the public learned far more about the police response than by simply reading an officer’s incident report (an incident report wasn’t filed after the Pontoon stop, by the way).
While dashcam recordings from both cases have answered some questions, they’ve raised new ones.
For instance, the Satterwhite footage provides viewers with only one vantage point – from inside Craven’s police vehicle, which is parked behind Satterwhite’s car. It’s virtually impossible to tell from this perspective exactly what Satterwhite was doing in the seconds before Craven fired several shots into his vehicle.
There’s also no audio from Craven’s dashcam. S.C. State Law Enforcement Division spokesman Thom Berry tells us the battery to Craven’s microphone was dead and incapable of recording audio.
The microphone from another officer’s dashcam was functioning normally and managed to record sound. But what if Craven was alone? What if there were no other cameras recording what happened? The public would never know what was said during the pursuit and subsequent officer-involved shooting.
In a more general sense, the possibility of audio malfunctioning should be a cause for concern for police officers and the public.
Having both video and audio brings complete clarity to a police stop.
Functioning body cameras would solve these problems. In the Satterwhite case, they would’ve shown exactly what was happening inside Satterwhite’s car and also served as backup for Craven’s malfunctioning microphone.
As for the traffic stop in Aiken, once again the fixed positioning of dashcam video gives an incomplete account of what happened. Because of this, viewers have been forced to come to their own conclusions.
There is no visual confirmation a cavity search took place during the October 2014 traffic stop at Horry Street, near Richland Avenue. But there’s no visual confirmation it didn’t happen.
There is plenty of audio suggesting some sort of search took place, possibly including a body cavity, but we can’t see exactly what happened.
A jury may decide there’s enough evidence that a cavity search occurred. And yet, audio alone may not sway the jury.
Had body cameras been rolling, there is a greater likelihood that there would’ve been clear, convincing and irrefutable evidence showing what happened. And had that been the case, the narrative today would be much different.
As with all police equipment, body cameras come with a cost.
At a recent Aiken County budget meeting, the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office requested nearly $183,000 for body cameras that would go to about 150 deputies.
Unfunded mandates, unfortunately, are the nature of the beast in the constant tug-of-war between local and state government. But in the instance of body cams, it appears that’s not the case.
South Carolina Rep. Bill Hixon, R-North Augusta, says local governments that buy body cams will be reimbursed by the state provided they meet certain guidelines, and provide documentation to the state those guidelines have been met. It’s a slow process, however, but well worth the investment.