preview

Marcus Jeter's Case Summary

Decent Essays
Open Document

During the summer of 2012, Marcus Jeter, an African-American male, was arrested by New Jersey police officers, Orlando Trinidad and Sean Courter, due to the reason of “eluding police, resisting arrest and aggravated assault on an officers” (Goldstein). Some of the interaction was recorded on the dashboard camera, but not much of it could help prove Jeter’s innocence. Jeter consistently argued that the officers had used excessive violence during his arrest even though he was compliant and did not act out of turn. After listening to Jeter’s testimonial, the Bloomfield Police Department conducted an internal investigation, but reported no wrongdoing in the officer’s actions. Jeter’s case then proceeded and he contemplated accepting the plea deal …show more content…

On August 5, 2014, five days prior to Michael Brown’s death, John Crawford III was fatally shot by police officers in an Ohio Walmart aisle. At the site of Crawford’s shooting, there were two hundred surveillance cameras, many showing him holding a toy gun, him on his cell phone, and other details of his death. After receiving a call from Ronald Richie, another patron, police officers responded to the scene with loaded guns and without any de-escalation fatally shot Crawford. Likewise with many other African American shootings by the police, the grand jury also failed to indict the officers who shot Crawford. Crawford’s outcome demonstrates one reason to be skeptical about the Police CAMERA Act because although there are high-quality camera footages police officers are still not getting indicted and these violent acts are still ongoing. However, as stated previously, body-worn cameras creates a sense of “self-awareness” in police officers than any other video capturing device can. According to the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology, though Crawford’s death is a “miscarriage of justice, the filming itself by bystander or any form would not generate the self-awareness and consequent behavior modification during the incident.” Dr. Barak Ariel, a member of the Rialto Study from the Cambridge Institution of Criminology, explained that the body-worn camera present a ‘preventative treatment’ that carry a straightforward, pragmatic message that everyone is being watched, videotaped, and are expected to follow the

Get Access