Police Cameras Had No Effect. Why?

Three years after Ferguson, Missouri, erupted over racism in policing, we still don’t know exactly what led to the shooting that touched off the conflagration. We have video of the moments after a white police officer shot a young black man, Michael Brown. The footage shows Brown lying lifeless in the street, the horrified onlookers staring. But we have no record of the moments before.

In the absence of video evidence, two parallel and irreconcilable narratives exist. In one, Officer Darren Wilson was being threatened by a teenager who had recently robbed a convenience store, and the officer responded with lethal force when the teen reached for the officer's gun. In another, Wilson shot an unarmed black teenager who may have offered some petty verbal challenge to his authority but posed no threat.