KPBS’s Claire Trageser today re-shared her interesting 2020 writeup on Critical Incident Videos, a public relations company that the San Diego Police Department uses to repackage bodycam footage, a practice that allows the department to nominally comply with AB 748 while simultaneously turning that compliance into extensively edited spin that favors its own position.
Many other California police departments have taken a similar approach. KTVU reported on the Vallejo police’s use of this heavy editing, the San Jose Mercury News reported that Critical Incident Videos is consulting for “about 100 agencies up and down the state” on releases of video. We encountered similar massaging/editing of a bodycam video release in El Centro.
Hat tip: @jamesstout