Following APD body cam video release in fatal Handy shooting, policing expert says edited videos becoming more common

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A national policing expert shared similar transparency concerns with the family of Kristopher Handy over a heavily edited 10-minute video that was released this week by Anchorage Police depicting body cam footage of a deadly shooting in May.

The video, which included body camera footage and 911 call audio of the fatal officer-involved shooting on May 13, has been a source of controversy for people and advocacy groups in Anchorage this year as they have called for its release.

Alex del Carmen, an associate Dean for the School of Criminology at Tarleton State University in Forth Worth, Texas, said it’s becoming more common for departments across the country to edit videos before their release to the public.

Del Carmen said an increasing number of police departments across the country are moving toward pre-producing videos, including showing chief introductions and dispatch calls, which he says are included for context.

However, after reviewing the APD video, del Carmen said he has not seen a video as heavily edited as what the Anchorage department released Wednesday, which he said will result in questions about why edits were needed.

“In the video itself, you have various instances where the video seems to be cutting into different perspectives, as opposed to letting the video play out, you know, in terms of what one individual saw, what that individual encountered, and how the individual was neutralized,” Del Carmen said. “If the idea of releasing the video was to establish that an imminent threat was in place, I think the video in totality would have been helpful.”

The APD video begins with an introduction by Chief Sean Case before moving into maps of the parameter, as well as the two 911 calls made by Handy’s neighbor and dispatch calls to responding officers.

Roughly seven minutes into the video is when body camera footage from three different officers is first shown.

On Wednesday, following the video’s release, attorneys for both the Handy family and Handy’s fiancée Harmony Stitt expressed disappointment.

Stitt’s attorney Mike Kramer raised questions specifically over why portions of the video appear pixelated while others do not.

“It was a very polished PR piece, it wasn’t transparency and full disclosure of what happened that night,” Kramer said. “Why were there only three body cam videos when there were eight officers present?”

Civil Rights Attorney James Roberts, who is representing the Handy family, said the family has refused to watch what was released by APD and instead are still demanding the release of the raw footage.

“They don’t want to watch the narrative that the Anchorage Police Department is trying to form, they want to see exactly what happened,” Roberts said. “So they have not watched the video — really the movie — that was put together by the chief and his department. They’re waiting to see the unedited and unredacted versions of those videos.”

Case said on Wednesday during a press conference that the reason for the edited video was to get the public information as quickly as possible, and holding the remaining footage was in the interest of protecting the privacy of Handy’s family members and children who were inside of the apartment at the time of the shooting.

“In the future, we are looking into — although producing this video, we will continue to do this for officer-involved shootings in the future — we’re also looking at releasing the remaining footage after it’s been redacted,” Case said.

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