When Bystanders Step Between the Police and Black Men

‘Oh, God,’ a voice somewhere behind the camera breathes, sure that the moment of crisis has arrived.

But the encounter is already beginning to go off script. A voice says, probably too quietly for the police to hear, “He’s not holding a gun — I’m more afraid of you.” Someone else says, more loudly, to the blazing light, “We’re much more scared of the [expletive] police in this situation than this guy.” Soon the cry echoes down the street: “No one has a gun except for you.”

Someone shouts at the police: “Calm down! Calm the [expletive] down!” A bystander in a green coat comes forward, offering to walk alongside the man in the hoodie so he’ll be safer approaching the police, but after agreeing, the man says, shakily, “I’m just getting on the ground” and falls to his knees. The dog walker comes protectively close; Green Coat positions himself between the man and the rifle. “Oh, God,” a voice somewhere behind the camera breathes, sure that the moment of crisis has arrived.

It never comes. On body-cam video released by the Police Department, officers shout repeatedly at the bystanders who crowd the scene: “You with the dog, get out of there!” Finally, one speaks into the radio. “We’re going to go ahead and disengage.” The officer with the gun lowers it, locks it up and begins to drive away.

When the police suddenly leave the scene, it feels bizarre: What is this, a gun-toting emergency or a nonevent? The camera doesn’t capture the aftermath for the man in the hoodie, who, according to a witness quoted by the Capitol Hill blog, was left “terrified and sobbing when it was all over.” The police-blotter version of the incident focuses on the abruptness of the departure: “Based on the number of community members becoming involved and their unwillingness to comply with officers’ commands, it became clear there was no safe means to detain the subject.”

What really stands out in the video is the remarkable power that witnesses can have. The panicked question that opens the video — “What’s going on?” — is the same one that animates so many police encounters, moments of confusion and alarm, met with the assertion of control. Here, though, the bystanders are evaluating all the potential dangers around them, but especially the ones that arrived with flashing lights. What they see is a perilous misunderstanding, a frightening escalation, the possibility of a terrible, and terribly familiar, conclusion — and a responsibility to act.

Contrary to the myth of the bystander effect, passers-by step in to help in a vast majority of public conflicts. But in cases where bystanders have disrupted police actions, even just by videotaping them, they’ve been arrested and charged with obstruction of justice. It’s not hard to imagine the scene playing out quite differently in a majority-Black neighborhood, or one that’s not Seattle’s Capitol Hill. The video was recorded just blocks from the East Precinct, which was abandoned during protests over the murder of George Floyd, and statistical analysis has indicated that police killings of Black and Hispanic people drop after protests against police violence.