Editorial: Delaying Release Of Police Tapes Is Serving Who?

Both Lima Police Chief Kevin Martin and the Rev. Lamont Monford of the Black Ministerial Alliance are on record as embracing the use of police body cameras. They see the cameras as a tool of building trust between blacks and police. But as we’ve been seeing in Charlotte, North Carolina, that trust can only be maintained when the footage from police body cameras are made available to the public in a timely manner. Such has not been the case for the South’s Queen City, and instead of allowing body cameras and dashboard cameras to bring some sense of clarity to the fatal shooting of a black man by police, another American community has been splintered with anger, looting and violence. It doesn’t have to be that way. Police in Tulsa, Oklahoma, aiming for transparency, quickly released videos of the shooting of a black motorist.