Technology And Justice

Camera and cellphone footage have provided solid evidence of various police shootings in the US which resulted in black members of the public being killed. But can technology really help bring the guilty to book?

 

- Lloyd Gedye

US-based South African comedian Trevor Noah, who was chosen to host Comedy Central’s The Daily Show in 2015, made headlines recently.

Noah delivered a monologue after airing the recently released dash-cam video footage of the Minnesota police officer who fatally shot 32-year-old Philando Castile in July last year, after stopping him for a faulty taillight.

The situation turned deadly seconds after Castile told the officer that he was carrying a gun, for which he had a permit.

The dash-cam footage can be easily found online, but it makes for truly traumatic viewing.

“I won’t lie to you,” Noah said after The Daily Show aired the clip. “When I watched this video, it broke me.

“It just – it broke me,” he continued. “You see many of these videos, and you start to get numb, but this one?”

“Seeing the child, that little girl [the four-year-old daughter of Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds], getting out of the car, after watching a man get killed, it broke my heart into little pieces.”

Noah railed against the fact that the officer involved, Jeronimo Yanez, was acquitted of manslaughter charges. He said that the jury’s decision was “basically saying” that in America it is reasonable to be afraid of a person, “just because they are black”. “That’s the truth of what we saw with this verdict,” he commented.