The Denver Post editorial board urges states to strengthen the right to record police:
Denver police and other departments are in the process of experimenting with body cameras for officers, which could become a critical check on disputed claims offered by police or citizens. Denver's pilot program, which has logged more than six months in the field, shows great promise despite flaws outlined in a recent report by the city's independent monitor.
The other side of the video equation is of course citizen recordings of the sort released in North Charleston. The good news is that courts in recent years have largely affirmed a citizen's right under the First Amendment to record police behavior — or anything else — in a public location. And attempts by police and municipal officials around the country to suppress or even outlaw such recordings have greatly subsided since the early days of smartphones and tablets.
Nevertheless, incidents still occur in which police admonish or threaten those filming them, or even seize the recording device
Errol Louis at CNN:
More than 20 years ago, Congress approved a law, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, signed by President Bill Clinton, that requires the federal Justice Department to collect data on deaths caused by police. The law has never truly been implemented, leaving us with patchy information about particular episodes rather than a comprehensive sense of how race and policing play out in America.
"What happened here today doesn't happen all the time. What if there was no video? What if there was no witness -- or hero, as I call him -- to come forward?" said L. Chris Stewart, an attorney for Scott's family. "As you can see, the initial (police) reports stated something totally different."
That's putting it mildly. In early police statements -- issued before the video came to light -- Slager reportedly said that Scott attacked him, that he fired only after a scuffle and that cops made medical efforts to revive Scott. The video makes hash of those claims, and likely contributed to Slager's swift arrest and pending murder charges. "When you're wrong, you're wrong," said North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey.
More on the day's top stories below the fold.
Eugene Robinson:
In the cellphone video, Slager makes no attempt to revive the dying man. Instead, he goes back to the place where the encounter began, picks up an object and returns to drop it next to Scott’s body. The object, difficult to identify in the video, is believed to be Slager’s police Taser. [...]
Walter Scott’s broken taillight was an excuse, not an offense. Slager knew that Scott had to be guilty of something. It was just a matter of finding out what that black man’s crime might be.
Betsy Woodruff looks at Ted Cruz's "sugar daddy":
Hedge fund CEO Robert Mercer is all in for the conservative Texas Republican Ted Cruz, and the billionaire will have unusually substantial influence in how his contributions get spent.
But the billionaire also has some baggage—like, the avoiding billions in taxes kind of baggage.
His alleged failure to pay those taxes led to substantial congressional scrutiny in 2014—and it’s not clear the investigation is over.
Damon Linker at The Week says Rand Paul is running a "totally conventional" campaign:
You ever get the feeling the whole world is colluding to perpetuate a fraud?
You can see it happening right now around the just-announced presidential candidacy of Republican Sen. Rand Paul. It seems that everyone — including the candidate himself, the narrative-hungry reporters covering his nascent campaign, and his antagonists in his own party — has a stake in portraying him as some newfangled Republican poised to move the GOP in a super-duper innovative direction.
There's just one teeny-tiny problem: It isn't true.
Over at The Atlanta Journal Constitution,
Jay Bookman takes on Dick Cheney's latest comments:
In more rational times, in fact in almost any other time in American history, the suggestion that a U.S. president is willfully attempting to undermine the country from within — that he in fact is committing treason — would disqualify the speaker from further serious discourse. Even at the deepest depths of the Iraq War, for example, top Democratic leaders certainly questioned Cheney’s judgment and wisdom, but they did not publicly question his patriotism. They left conspiratorial muttering about Halliburton stock, etc., to the chatrooms, blogs, email chains and occasional backbenchers, where it belonged.