Alamance judge lets police lock up videos. Exclusive clips show hostility to protesters.

Editor’s note: This story was updated July 8 to include a response from Graham Police Chief Mary K. Cole.

An Alamance County judge agreed on Wednesday to allow local law enforcement to delay releasing video from an Oct. 31 march that made headlines worldwide.

The decision by Judge Andrew H. Hanford means that the footage will likely not be released to the public for months, if at all.

A review of some of the Graham Police video, obtained independently by The News & Observer, shows instances of police treating the mostly African American marchers with open hostility.

A coalition of news organizations, including The News & Observer, sought the video recorded by law enforcement to fact check narratives that emerged in news conferences and lawsuits.

Body camera laws have been implemented in states across the country in response to calls for greater police accountability. North Carolina’s law is unusual in it that leaves the release of law enforcement video up to the decision of a local Superior Court judge. The judge must consider several criteria, including the privacy interests of those represented in the video footage, in determining whether video should be released.

Last month, after reviewing the event footage and listening to arguments by the news organizations and law enforcement agencies, Hanford found that “failure to release the photos/recordings would undermine the public trust and confidence in the administration of justice.”

Graham filed a notice of appeal, and both law enforcement agencies declined to turn over the footage to a News & Observer visual journalist on June 25, the deadline set by Hanford’s order.

The timeline for when the Court of Appeals will decide the case is unclear. Until that process is finished, the disputed footage can stay under wraps, Hanford decided Wednesday.

The law enforcement agencies did not get all they asked for on Wednesday. Hanford rebuffed a request from Tony Biller, a private attorney hired by Graham, to force news organizations to obscure the faces and name tags on officers visible in the video.

Prior to an Oct. 31 march, Graham had one of the most persistent Black Lives Matter protests in the country. On that date, hundreds of people marched from a local A.M.E church to a historic courthouse where a controversial Confederate monument stands, intending to continue to a nearby polling place.

After marchers stopped for a moment of silence, Graham police deployed pepper fog and forced them off the road. That and the release of subsequent rounds of pepper spray by Graham police and county sheriff deputies generated news headlines around the world.

The News & Observer reviewed video that was released, by subpoena, to Kelly Skahan, a lawyer arrested on misdemeanor changes, now dropped, on Oct. 31 while officers tried to clear people from downtown Graham. It includes footage of officers joking about their eagerness to spray march participants.

In one clip, an officer approaches Rodney King, then a sergeant and now Graham’s assistant chief, to congratulate him for being the first to deploy pepper fog.

“I knew you’d spray first, I knew it,” the officer says. “I love it. I love it.” King responds by laughing, and the two officers exchange a fist bump.

Another clip shows Officer Brandon Land joking with another officer earlier in the day. “See, I haven’t even messed with them today, and they still hate me,” he says.

In a separate clip, another officer says, “OK, so eight minutes from now, we’re going to start clearing these mother****ers.”

Other footage shows marchers running into metal barricades after they have been subjected to the pepper fog. “Here we go, baby,” an officer can be heard saying. “Here we go.”

In a written statement posted on Twitter late Thursday, a day after the video excerpts were published, Graham Police Chief Mary K. Cole acknowledged officers made some “unprofessional comments” during more than 40 demonstrations in Graham in 2020.

“We ask that the community provides us with grace during rare occasions that we fall short,” she wrote.

During the demonstrations, officers contended with long hours, intense heat, pandemic-related staffing challenges and “demonstrators who cursed at them and attempted to incite them to react negatively,” the chief wrote.

“Although we always strive for perfection, police officers are also people and they are not perfect. Police officers are like members of any profession and sometimes they make mistakes or fall short of expectations,” she wrote, adding: “It is unrealistic to expect officers to abandon all human emotion especially in the midst of volatile situations.”

When department members make errors or don’t live up to expectations, they are held accountable, Cole said.

After Graham police released pepper spray and forced marchers off the road on Oct. 31, a department spokesman did say an after-action report would be created and released to the public. It has not been released to date.

This story was originally published July 7, 2021 at 6:10 PM.