Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: Five things body cameras teach us

By now, you've probably seen the Columbus police body-cam videos from Tuesday's shooting on 28th Street.

Through an open records request, senior editor Stephanie Pedersen obtained the video Thursday from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the case. The footage came from two different officers' cameras, and we posted it on our website that night in separate videos.

To say it went viral is an understatement. By morning, more than 50,000 people -- or a quarter of the population of Columbus -- had seen at least one of the videos. About 35,000 people learned about the videos on Facebook and took the time to click on a link, go to our site, and then click on a video.

Once there, about 80 percent of those viewers watched the entire video, right through to the credits.

And then thousands of people went back to Facebook to comment, share and like the post.

Those numbers are huge for any market, and rare.

They are also revealing. Sure, the videos are sensational, containing swift and violent action, blood and profanity. I'm sure the warning labels we put on them didn't hurt our traffic.

But those videos also taught us some things. Let's run through some of them:

No. 1: Those body cameras, which the Columbus Police Department has been acquiring for several years, are incredible. The images and the sound are crystal clear.

I don't think Steven Spielberg himself could have captured it any better. We see the car crash and the door swinging open, we hear the gunshots, we see the bullet holes, we hear the adrenaline-fueled shouts and screams.

Things are moving fast, but we know what's happening.

No. 2: We want to know what's happening. When the public doesn't know what's happening, it's human nature to speculate and formulate theories about what happened. People are going to do that, even if they have no clue.

But I believe that most people want to know the truth, and that's why so many people took the time to watch the videos on Thursday night.

A common refrain was this: "Great job, CPD!" Or, "Way to go, CPD!"

One woman added this: "Thank goodness for body cams."

That was a prevailing sentiment. Most people want to believe their police department is well-trained and competent in the midst of crisis, but they want to see and hear it for themselves.

That's why I chose not to bleep out the profanity or blur out the bleeding, and instead start each video with a warning label.

If you take out words or doctor images, it leads people to wonder if you're hiding anything. Were we bleeping out profanity or a racial epithet? Were we shielding you from gore or incriminating evidence?

These videos were too important to people to hide things from them.

Besides, crime and danger should shake us when we see it. We're desensitized to it enough already. If I hear bleeps, I think I'm watching just another episode of "Cops."

No. 3: Witnesses can tell lies.

Let's face it, people on a crime scene will sometimes tell detectives and television reporters things that simply aren't true.

No. 4: Police work is incredibly hard and stressful.

If Officer Ryan Vardman hadn't jumped into the vehicle when Towon Earl sped away, he could quite possibly have been killed when Earl sideswiped the front of a parked van.

We see that clearly on the video. We also see the cameras shaking as the officers are running, and we hear panting and, yes, swearing. Lots of us have let F-bombs fly under far less trying circumstances.

In fact, I was more surprised to see Earl wearing his seat belt.

No. 5: Most officers are good people who do a good job.

The natural reaction of our viewers was to praise the officers on the scene,. We expect heroism to be in the job description of police officers and soldiers, but as a society we've also learned to honor it when we see it in them. That's as it should be.

Not all officers are good, of course. Lt. Charles Joseph Gliniewicz of Illinois is the latest evidence of this.

When there's suspicion or speculation, we just want to see what happened for ourselves.

This week, body cameras gave us the opportunity to do that.

Dimon Kendrick-Holmes, executive editor, dkholmes@ledger-enquirer.com.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 9:56 PM with the headline "Dimon Kendrick-Holmes: Five things body cameras teach us ."