Cal Matters California law forced police to release shooting footage. videos follow the same script
By NIGEL DUARA | CaLmatters PUBLISHED: April 10, 2023 at 7:56 a.m. | UPDATED: April 10, 2023 at 8:08 a.m.
Ken Pritchett clicks his mouse and the logo of a Southern California police department pops up on a computer monitor the width of his shoulders. Another click and the image flips to a three-dimensional map. A glowing orange arrow indicates the direction a man ran as he tried to evade police.
The video isn’t much different from hundreds of others produced since California passed a law in 2018 mandating police departments release body camera footage within 45 days of any incident when an officer fires a gun, or uses force that leads to great bodily injury or death. Like most other critical incident videos released by law enforcement agencies after a shooting, this one is a heavily edited version of the original raw video, created by one of the private contractors that went into business editing police footage after the law went into effect.
