Videos often contradict what police say in reports. Here’s why some officers continue to lie
News cameras showed officers in Atlanta breaking the windows of a vehicle, pulling a woman out of the car and tasing a man. In his report, an officer wrote he wasn’t sure the pair was armed. They were college students returning from a late-night food run.
And surveillance footage from a Minneapolis restaurant near where George Floyd was killed appeared to contradict police claims that he resisted arrest.
Police officers are authority figures, and their words have historically held more weight than the average citizen. But videos from several recent incidents, and countless others from over the years, have shown what many black Americans have long maintained: that police officers lie.
Here’s why experts say some police officers falsify reports and statements, and why the problem persists.
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A video showed officers in Buffalo, New York, pushing a 75-year-old man. Police initially said he had tripped and fell.
What prompts it
It’s fairly common for officers to lie in police reports, said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.
Stinson has tracked arrest cases of nonfederal sworn law enforcement officers who have been charged with at least one crime from 2005 to 2014. His research shows that out of more than 10,000 officer arrest cases, about 6.3% involved false reports or statements. About a quarter of those cases involving false reports or statements also involved alleged acts of police violence – and he said the problem is probably more common than the data suggests.
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So why do officers lie in police statements?
Self-preservation: One of the reasons is simple: to avoid the consequences.
That’s according to David Thomas, a professor of forensic studies and criminal justice at Florida Gulf Coast University and a retired police officer.
When officers misrepresent incidents in police reports, it is often to justify the use of excessive force or an unlawful arrest, he said. The officer knows that they have made a mistake and are trying to avoid losing their job, criminal charges or other disciplinary actions.
“Your motivation to lie, really, is to keep your job and hope that nobody finds out,” Thomas said.
To justify an action: Another reason is what’s known as “noble cause corruption,” said Philip Stinson, a criminologist and professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University.
Officers might lie in police reports to justify an action they took, whether the use of force or a questionable arrest. Police are often operating under the mindset that they are keeping communities safe or getting criminals off the streets. So when they lie, the idea is that the ends justify the means – that their actions were ultimately for a good cause.
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“It’s an ingrained part of the police subculture in many communities across the country,” Stinson said.
Even if there is video of the incident showing otherwise, many officers believe that their word will mean more than the tape, Thomas said.
A common argument that officers make when a video shows them acting in questionable ways is that the public often doesn’t see what happened at the beginning, he said. So some officers will tell a story that justifies what viewers saw in the recording.
What perpetuates it
Time and time again, videos have surfaced that have contradicted what police said in their initial statements.
In the case of 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, who was shot by officer Roy Oliver as he was leaving a party, the Balch Springs police initially said that the car Edwards was in was moving aggressively toward officers before Oliver fired into it.
The body camera told a different story, showing that the car was moving in the opposite direction.
They are often not held accountable: Roy Oliver was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison – but such convictions are rare.
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That’s one of the reasons that some police officers lie in reports, despite the possibility of video counteracting their claims, says Rachel Moran, an assistant professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law.
Sometimes, the video is never made public. And even when it is, officers are often not held accountable.
“There’s so many lies being caught on video or this behavior that the police then tell a totally different story about,” Moran said. “There’s a lot of police officers lying who we’re just not going to find out about. And then the ones who are, it doesn’t mean just because there’s brief political outrage that they’re going to get held accountable.”
The investigative process tends to favor officers: Moran, whose research focuses on police accountability, said that the complaint process for someone who feels they have been mistreated by an officer can be highly bureaucratic. It also tends to favor the officer, she said.
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Most police departments around the country handle officer misconduct complaints through an internal affairs unit within the department. That means police are generally investigating their own colleagues, and deciding what punishment, if any, to impose.
“There’s a strong culture of protecting each other,” Moran said. “Sometimes there’s also strong bias often against people making the complaints. Class and race bias come heavily into play there. So here’s often a presumption, whether intentional or not, that the people making the complaints are probably at fault.”
Discipline is often minimal: Even when discipline is imposed, Moran says, it often isn’t meaningful.
Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee into George Floyd’s neck, was the subject of at least 18 prior complaints, according to a department internal affairs public summary. Only two were “closed with discipline.”
But it’s not just an accountability issue, says Stephen Rushin, an associate professor of law at Loyola University Chicago.
A police officer wearing a body cam is seen during a demonstration in Atlanta on May 31. Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
Officers are often protected from repercussions: In some jurisdictions, there are systems in place that protect officers from repercussions, Rushin said.
In an article for The George Washington Law Review, Rushin and Atticus DeProspo analyzed 657 police union contracts and 20 law enforcement officer bills of rights, which govern internal disciplinary procedures for many police officers in the US.
They found that “while many of these jurisdictions have reasonable regulations in place to prevent coercive or abusive tactics, a significant number of departments provide officers with interrogation protections that may frustrate accountability efforts.”
About 20% of the agencies they analyzed stipulated a waiting period for officers before they are interrogated about suspected misconduct. And about 28% of agencies required internal investigators to turn over potentially incriminating evidence to officers before they may be questioned.
“In agencies that provide rigid waiting periods and agencies that provide officers access to video evidence and other incriminating evidence against them in internal investigations, officers know they’re going to have a period of time to get their story straight, to come up with a story that’s consistent with the evidence against them to avoid accountability,” Rushin said.
What might prevent it
Preventing officers from lying in police reports and statements is an extremely complex issue.
Video evidence: The use of surveillance cameras, smartphones and body cameras to generate evidence in incidents of potential police misconduct has become much more widespread in recent years. And in many incidents, it was the video footage that led to criminal charges – and sometimes convictions.
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But rules often vary on whether officers are required to turn on body cameras, whether the videos must be reviewed before writing incident reports and whether are released publicly. And studies on their effectiveness have yielded mixed results.
Changing the culture: Another piece of it is changing systemic police culture, said Thomas. Police chiefs need to set standards and better train officers around use of force, deescalation and report falsification, and hold officers accountable when they violate those standards.
“Systematically, the culture has to change or we will continue to have these problems,” he said.
Ending in-house investigations: One particular reform that’s often proposed around police accountability is removing internal affairs units from review processes, and empowering civilian review agencies, which are generally composed by members of the public, Moran said. But even when cities have civilian review boards, they tend to be weak, she said.
Thomas also pointed to the power of police unions, who play a significant role in protecting officers from accountability and often block efforts by departments to reform agencies.
There are no easy answers, the experts said.
But, they say, with so many instances of video evidence discrediting the initial police account, demanding them is long overdue.
Police withhold videos
despite vows of transparency
But officers investigated in fatal shootings are routinely given access to body camera footage
Story by Kimberly Kindy, Julie Tate
Video by Zoeann Murphy
Published on October 8, 2015
Autumn Steele and her husband, Gabriel, were fighting again, so he called 911. A police officer sped to their home, pulled out his gun and then — frightened by the family dog — opened fire, killing Autumn with a bullet to her chest.
Since the Jan. 6 shooting, Steele’s family has battled police in Burlington, Iowa, to see 28 minutes of body camera video recorded by the two officers who responded that day. Police have declared the videos confidential, saying the shooting was tragic but reasonable, given that the dog “attacked.” State investigators have released a 12-second clip from the videos, but Steele’s relatives say it raises more questions than it answers.
About this story: The Post contacted police departments nationwide to request body camera footage of officers involved in fatal shootings. Reporters surveyed departments on policies for disclosing body camera footage, in part to determine whether officers involved in use-of-force incidents were allowed to review the recordings prior to giving statements to investigators. Reporters also analyzed legislation nationwide to identify restrictions on the use of body cameras and the disclosure of the resulting footage. These shootings were identified in a database The Post is compiling of all fatal shootings nationwide by officers in the line of duty in 2015, available here.
“I deserve to know what happened to my daughter. The public deserves to know,” said Steele’s mother, Gail Colbert. “How can they keep this from us?”
In the turbulent year since Michael Brown’s death sparked protests in Ferguson, Mo., and beyond, politicians, law enforcement officials and community activists have seized on body cameras as a vital reform capable of restoring transparency and trust to police interactions with the public. But in Burlington and elsewhere around the country, police and other officials are routinely blocking the release of body camera videos while giving officers accused of wrongdoing special access to the footage.
Nationwide, police have shot and killed 760 people since January, according to a Washington Post database tracking every fatal shooting. Of those, The Post has found 49 incidents captured by body camera, or about 6 percent.
Just 21 of those videos — less than half — have been publicly released. And in several of those cases, the footage, as in Burlington, was severely cut or otherwise edited.
[See body camera footage, obtained by The Post through public records information requests]
Meanwhile, virtually all of the 36 departments involved in those shootings have permitted their officers to view the videos before giving statements to investigators, The Post found. Civil and human rights groups fear that access could help rogue officers tailor their stories to obscure misconduct and avoid prosecution.
Shane McCampbell, a minister and the mayor of Burlington, Iowa, where Autumn Steele lived. Steele’s fatal shooting by Burlington Police was captured by body cameras worn by two officers who responded. The department has refused to release the full recording of the incident and state officials, who investigated, only released a 12-second excerpt. McCampbell said the lack of disclosure undermines the purpose of body cameras. (David Acker for The Washington Post)
“What point is there of even doing this if they are going to be treated this way? Why even spend the money on these cameras?” said Burlington Mayor Shane McCampbell, who has called on police to release video of the Steele shooting. He noted that police promised greater openness last year when they petitioned the city to buy body cameras.
If the videos “are going to be a secret, no one is being held accountable,” McCampbell said. “And that was the point.”
While individual police departments are adopting rules on the local level, police chiefs and unions are lobbying state officials to enshrine favorable policies into law. In 36 states and the District this year, lawmakers introduced legislation to create statewide rules governing the use of body cameras, often with the goal of increasing transparency.
Of 138 bills, 20 were enacted, The Post found. Eight of those expanded the use of body cameras. However, 10 set up legal roadblocks to public access in states such as Florida, South Carolina and Texas. And most died after police chiefs and unions mounted fierce campaigns against them.
Police officials defend that effort, saying overly lax rules could end up helping criminals. Jury pools could be tainted by the general release of video evidence, making it difficult to win convictions. Eyewitnesses and informants may be reluctant to come forward if there’s a chance they were caught on a video that may be publicly released. Other people caught on camera may file lawsuits claiming that police violated their right to privacy.
“If you have a kid who drank too much on his 21st birthday and the police are called, do you really want video of that kid, sick and throwing up, to be on YouTube for the rest of his life?” said Richard Beary, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and chief of the University of Central Florida’s police force.
Those arguments prevailed in Los Angeles this spring, when the city’s police commission adopted one of the most restrictive policies in the nation. Now, anyone who wants a body camera video from the Los Angeles Police Department will likely have to ask for it in court.
“A judge should be making this decision,” said Craig Lally, president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the local police union. “They can listen to all sides of the argument, weigh everyone’s interests and determine if there really is a public interest at stake.”
Civil rights organizations say policies that restrict access subvert the promise of body cameras.
“If police departments and law enforcement become the sole arbiters of what video the public gets to see, body cameras will go from being a transparency and accountability tool to a surveillance and propaganda tool,” said Chad Marlow, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “Are we going to let that happen?”
Police body cameras: A struggle over who controls the footage
Police departments across the country have increasingly used body cameras to record interactions with the public. Some politicians and activists have seized on the cameras as way to restore transparency to policing. Some police departments, however, are blocking access to the footage the cameras record.
(Zoeann Murphy)
Unreliable footage
Despite the growing popularity of body cameras, fatal police encounters are still rarely documented by department-owned video. Only about a third of the nation’s 18,000 police departments have acquired body cameras, and some issue the devices only to a few officers.
Last month, the Obama administration announced $23 million in grants to expand the use of the cameras, with the goal of enhancing “transparency, accountability and credibility” in police encounters with the public, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said.
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But even when a camera is present, things can go wrong. The cameras typically attach to an officer’s lapel or eyeglasses, and they can fall off during struggles or be angled away from the action. And police acknowledge that one of their biggest challenges is getting officers to turn the cameras on.
Most departments require officers to flip the switch just before they engage a member of the public — while making a traffic stop, for example, or responding to a 911 call. In more spontaneous encounters, officers are required to activate their cameras as soon as it is safe.
Once an incident is over, the cameras are turned off. The devices typically store footage automatically and are often tamper-proof, meaning officers cannot edit or delete video without being detected.
Problems with activation also have plagued cameras mounted on patrol car dashboards — known as dashcams — which have been standard equipment since the 1990s.
“Activating the cameras: This gets to the heart of transparency,” said Ken Wallentine, vice president of Lexipol, a company that police departments subscribe to for help in crafting model police policies. “Oversight from the video can’t happen if there is no video.”
Of 138 bills, only eight provide a pathway to police body cameras
138 bills introduced in state legislatures
20 bills that passed
8 bills that passed and took steps toward body-worn cameras
See which states passed the bills
Note: The District and Arizona passed bills that respectively required the mayor and a study committee to develop proposed policies. Most bills dealt with multiple issues; the maps represent highlights.
Sources: National Conference of State Legislatures, state legislation, staff reports. Graphic by Kennedy Elliott. Analysis by Kimberly Kindy.
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‘Show it to us. Release it.’
In the 36 departments where body cameras captured an officer-involved shooting this year, policies for releasing the video vary dramatically.
Five departments say they will never release video without a court order. Five say they will always release the footage. The rest fall somewhere in between, saying they release videos at the discretion of the police chief or local prosecutor, or when investigations are complete.
[See The Post’s database of fatal police shootings in 2015.]
In some places, policies seem to be in flux. Consider the case of Brandon Lawrence, 25, of Victoria, Tex. In April, shortly after the Victoria Police Department started its body camera program, two officers equipped with cameras approached Lawrence’s apartment.
Brandon Lawrence with his wife, Yasmine Lawrence, 23, and his children Vivianna, 2, and Hayden,1. Lawrence, 25, was fatally shot by a Victoria police officer outside of his home in the 800 block of Simpson Road in Victoria, Texas. (Handout photo via Victoria Advocate)
An Afghanistan war veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Lawrence had gotten into a fight with a neighbor and believed the man was coming to kill him, according to family and witnesses. Someone called 911, police knocked on Lawrence’s door and he opened it holding a machete.
By all accounts, Lawrence was disoriented. The officers repeatedly asked him to drop the blade; Lawrence repeatedly asked the officers to identify themselves. The officers said they opened fire because he advanced toward them, pinning one of them against a car.
The next day, Lawrence’s mother and stepfather drove 13 hours from Carbondale, Ill., to look for answers. They found a giant bloodstain on the lawn, just outside the apartment.
“How much advancing could Brandon have done if he died just five feet from his front door?” said Lawrence’s stepfather, Bryce Jacquot. “If they have video proof that their actions were righteous, show it to us. Release it.”
Local reporters have also petitioned to see the videos. In July, Victoria City Attorney Thomas Gwosdz said they would be released “when the investigation is over. The city’s practice and policy is that it is not confidential at that point.”
Now, however, Gwosdz says the videos may never be publicly disclosed. He is asking the Texas attorney general to determine whether the release would violate the privacy rights of surviving family members.
Lawrence’s mother and stepfather continue to seek full disclosure. Lawrence’s father, Bryon, said the videos are “nobody’s business.” Lawrence’s wife, Yasmine, has declined interview requests.
Meanwhile, Greg Cagle, an attorney for the two officers, insists the videos “100 percent support what the officers said happened.” Last month, a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against the officers.
Keeping evidence a secret
The Burlington, Iowa, video policy falls into the most restrictive category. Burlington city and police officials said if it had been up to them, no video of Autumn Steele’s shooting would have been released.
But the Iowa Department of Public Safety was called in to investigate the shooting, and state officials put out a 12-second excerpt.
Fatal police shooting of Autumn Steele in Burlington, Iowa
Autumn Steele, a 34-year-old woman, was shot and killed on Jan. 6 in Burlington, Iowa. Officials released just a 12-second excerpt of 28 minutes of video that shows Steele pulling at her husband’s jacket as the officer arrives. Their dog barks, the officer yells, “Get your dog!” and fires twice. The officer said he was aiming at the dog and accidentally shot Steele.
On the day of the shooting, Steele, 34, had been released from jail on a domestic violence charge for hitting Gabriel with a spatula, according to a police report. Violating a court order, she returned home, and Gabriel called police.
The wobbly video opens with officer Jesse Hill running toward the Steeles on a snowy sidewalk outside their home. Autumn is chasing Gabriel, who is carrying their 3-year-old son, Gunner. Their dog, Sammy, a German shepherd-collie mix, trails behind.
As Hill approaches, Autumn yells, “He’s got my kid!” Hill orders her to stop. Sammy starts barking, and the dog disappears from view.
“Get your dog!” Hill yells.
Before anyone can respond, Hill fires two shots while falling backward into the snow. The camera points briefly to the sky.
Gabriel stops running and turns to his wife: “He shot you?”
Autumn slumps to the sidewalk. The excerpt ends there.
Nearly 28 additional minutes of video were recorded that day, and Steele’s mother believes it would tell her much that she wants to know.
What did Hill say after firing the shots? Did Sammy bite him, as Hill claimed? And what did Hill do to try to save Steele’s life?
“How can you kill people and keep any of that evidence a secret?” Colbert said.
Hill told investigators he was forced to shoot because Sammy attacked him, and that he accidentally hit Steele. But Gabriel Steele and a neighbor who witnessed the shooting said Hill was blaming the dog to justify his own reckless behavior.
In February, both men testified at an animal control board hearing called to determine whether Sammy should be euthanized.
“As soon as that officer seen my dog, he pulled his weapon,” Gabriel Steele testified, periodically choking back tears. “That man stepped backward on the snow and he slipped. . . . That was when he fired his weapon twice because he had his finger on the trigger.”
The neighbor, Ed Ranck, testified that Sammy “startled” Hill, who overreacted.
“The dog basically jumped and put his paws on [Hill],” Ranck said. “I think it was more a playful action because he did the same thing to [Autumn Steele].”
Hill did not show up for the hearing. A different officer testified that Hill had been treated for a dog bite but presented no evidence.
“In the past, when we’ve had a bite like this, we have photographs of the bite,” said board Chairman Mark Cameron. The board voted unanimously to let Sammy live.
Burlington police declined to comment on the case, as did Hill. Beyond labeling the videos confidential, Holly Corkery, an attorney representing the city, also declined to discuss the case, saying city officials believe “litigation is imminent.”
