How Live-Streaming a Police Shooting Could Change the Narrative

When a police officer fatally shot her fiancé, Philando Castile, during a traffic stop in a Minnesota suburb, Diamond Reynolds responded the way she knew how: She calmly live-streamed the aftermath of the event, reciting on Facebook Live what happened in the car seat next to her.

In doing so, she punctuated a national paradigm shift forming since Ferguson, in which citizens and police watchdogs combine cellphone videos with social media to seize the narratives of controversial and racially charged police encounters, and pre-empt official accounts they often contend are sanitized for the public.

In the Bay Area and beyond, law enforcement officials and those tasked with keeping them in check are reaching a consensus about the immediacy of live video: This is the new normal, and it’s going to control how these horrific events play out from now on.

“These events are now being defined by people in the community,” said Walter Katz, San Jose’s independent police auditor and a nationally recognized police-accountability advocate. “They’re framing the incident within moments of it occurring. This has implications for how government agencies respond, and how media responds.”

To others, Reynolds provided a survival guide for people of color scared that something as innocuous as a busted taillight — the violation that led to her and Castile being stopped by police in the first place — could end in tragedy.

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 Photo Credit: Flickr/Tony Webster