RED TAPE: POLICE VIDEO OF STOP KEPT FROM PUBLIC

If you watch much local TV news, you've probably seen footage of our
sheriff's deputies in action. They all have video cameras in their cars
that start running whenever the blue lights and sirens go on, capturing
high-speed chases along the interstate and arrests on dark, forbidding streets.

"It's good video," said Kevin Daniels, the assistant news director at Fox
8. "It's good action."

Here's some footage you haven't seen.

Almost two weeks ago, two sheriff's deputies stopped a car on East 21st
Street because they said they suspected the driver was drunk.

Nakia Miguel Glenn got out of the car, a brown Pontiac. From here, the
story gets muddled.

It was 3 a.m. on a Sunday, but pretty soon a crowd of maybe 50 people
gathered. Witnesses said that the deputies told Glenn to put his hands on
the trunk and spread his legs.

The sheriff's office said that Glenn resisted arrest. Witnesses said that
he cooperated.

A Way To Get At The Facts

The sheriff's office said that deputies sprayed him with pepper spray and
released a police dog. Glenn bit the dog and then a deputy, the sheriff's
office said. Witnesses said that the deputies beat Glenn on the head with
their flashlights.

The facts aren't clear here. They rarely are. But this much is clear. Glenn
had a seizure in the ambulance and ended up in critical condition at
Forsyth Medical Center with a wad of cocaine lodged in his throat.

The cameras were rolling the whole time. And the tape might answer a lot of
questions that people have about the officers' conduct and Glenn's actions.

But we won't see this footage anytime soon.

The sheriff's office could release the tape, but it says it won't because
the tape is now part of an investigation. Agents from the State Bureau of
Investigation are due here next week to look into whether the deputies used
excessive force. And there's no telling when the tape will be released.

"We just feel like since there's an investigation we shouldn't do anything
until the investigation is complete," said Undersheriff Robert Joyce.

Not Just A Marketing Tool

Sheriff Ron Barker has released similar tapes before. In January he
released video of a high-speed chase and drug bust after he cleared two
deputies, including one involved in Glenn's case, of using excessive force.

When pressed now, Joyce and other officials say that the cameras didn't
catch much of what happened between Glenn and the deputies. A
dashboard-mounted camera can't follow the action.

That hasn't stopped good footage before. The sheriff, for example, uses
tape of standard chases to promote his special squads. Joyce said that the
office has shown footage to the people who run the Governor's Highway
Safety Program, an agency that provides a grant for the unit that stopped
Glenn.

The unit is known as the Highway Interdiction Team and normally enforces
traffic laws on the interstates. It's still not clear what its deputies
were doing on Cleveland Avenue and 21st Street the Sunday that Glenn got
stopped.

That's a question the tape won't answer. But it might clear up what
happened on 21st Street. After all, that's what the cameras, which cost us
all $500,000, were designed for.

They weren't meant to be a marketing tool. They were meant to clear up
cases just like Glenn's, where a defendant or an officer gets hurt.

"For this very thing," Joyce said yesterday. "It's for the citizen's
protection as well as the officers' protection."

There's no quibble here.

So show us the tape.