The nature of evidence

[DanieltheDragon]

I am not going to really comment on the Sandra Bland investigation or the actual stop. What I would like to draw attention to is 32:37 of this video. Also another point at 25:05

[yt][/yt]

You will see a white car appear on the left side of the screen and then suddenly disappear whilst reappearing moments later and then loop again a minute later. Clearly this video has been tampered with digital recording devices simply do not record this way. The only reason this would occur is if someone edited the recording. The other portion you will see the tow truck driver walk towards the officer off screen disappear and then reappear in a brief loop.

This is important for several reasons.

1. Why edit the video at all? If nothing illegal occurred why tamper with the evidence?
2. It makes other videos from this PD dubious if they are willing to tamper with this video what about other videos?
3. It jeopardizes the public trust.
4. This is illegal

§ 37.09. TAMPERING WITH OR FABRICATING PHYSICAL EVIDENCE.
(a) A person commits an offense if, knowing that an investigation or official proceeding is pending or in progress, he:
(1) alters, destroys, or conceals any record, document, or thing with intent to impair its verity, legibility, or availability as evidence in the investigation or official proceeding; or
(2) makes, presents, or uses any record, document, or thing with knowledge of its falsity and with intent to affect the course or outcome of the investigation or official proceeding.

The video was altered and was presented with knowledge of its falsity.



Questions for debate :

Does this effect how you treat the veracity of evidence?

Does this call into question the idea of police policing themselves?

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 10 by joejoeson]

I reckon there might have been something that was said or seen that compromised the arrest further and made it somehow worse than it already was. If they took out 30 seconds or less they would still need to loop a few elements to maintain continuity.

[joejoeson]

[Replying to post 11 by DanieltheDragon]

It's hard to tell what they might have edited out, it's not like anyone was by the vehicles at the time. Just take this as a lesson to not always believe what you see.

[Bust Nak]

Clearly this video has been tampered with digital recording devices simply do not record this way. The only reason this would occur is if someone edited the recording.

Is it clear? Can't it be a malfunction of the recording equipment?

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 13 by Bust Nak]

That is not how a digital recording is made. It is not made of individual elements and backgrounds. It is a single layer like a photo. If an element is in the foreground there is nothing behind it but empty space.






In this video the background has been removed from the frame so it can be replaced with something else. This is basically what it looks like when you remove an element. The checkered background is a transparent or blank layer.

So in the video with the white car for instance. Where it flickers in and out of the scene before it loops, it specifically had to be edited out turned into a transparent element like the picture above and then reinserted into the video on a separate layer above the background frame.


These are the formats that can be uploaded to youtube.

.MOV
.MPEG4
MP4
.AVI
.WMV
.MPEGPS
.FLV
3GPP
WebM


if it were to glitch for instance the whole frame would scramble or skip. Additionally the audio can be disconnected from the video as they can be encoded on separate layers. That is why when you are streaming a video and your connection speed drops the voices go at different speeds from the mouth. What occurred here is not a glitch. A digitally recorded video doesn't glitch that way. The only way that can occur is by someone manually manipulating the layer to create a separate element.

Perhaps the reason the editing occurred wasn't nefarious maybe they were cleaning up the footage from real recorded glitches to make a smoother video. Perhaps the audio glitched and to line up the video and the audio they needed to cut it together. The audio and video were recorded by different media so they would have needed to pair them together anyhow. The question is if there were some glitches in the video or audio why not keep the RAWs and upload those even if they weren't smooth or pretty? Perhaps the editing they put together glitched during compression and the various elements they put together became out of sync with each other.

If we are to put forth evidence I think it would be unethical to manipulate it even if it were for the sake of making something more aesthetic. Given that this came from a beurocratic department and not the PD itself maybe this was the case. However a lack of transparency is sorely lacking here and it works to undermine the public trust.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 13 by Bust Nak]

That is not how a digital recording is made. It is not made of individual elements and backgrounds. It is a single layer like a photo. If an element is in the foreground there is nothing behind it but empty space.

My initial thoughts were that the video skipped to a different time, as opposed to the white car being erased.

[DanieltheDragon]

[Replying to post 15 by Bust Nak]

yeah I didn't really catch it at first, the thing for me that makes it different is the car flickers and everything else stays the same. the white care flickers like it is on a separate layer and that layer glitched or wasn't cut properly.