Would releasing video of Tarrant County jail death really compromise the investigation?

Read the latest in our coverage of the death of Anthony Johnson Jr. and other issues in Tarrant County jail.

Amid calls for accountability for the death of a Fort Worth man in the Tarrant County Jail, the sheriff’s office has refused to release video footage of the in-custody death, citing its role in a criminal investigation.

Anthony Johnson Jr., 31, died on April 21 after being pepper-sprayed in an altercation with detention officers during a routine contraband check of his cell, the sheriff says. The former Marine was arrested on April 19 in the throes of a mental health crisis, after his family says he was turned away from a mental hospital.

Demands to release the video have come from Johnson’s family, their lawyer and Tarrant County residents who spoke at Tuesday’s Commissioners Court session.

State law does not require law enforcement agencies to withhold video footage of use of force events.

This month, Arlington police released bodycam footage of a man fatally shot by police in April while he wielded a knife.

Text at the beginning of footage released by Fort Worth police in January clearly states that the video was released while the investigation into the death of a man shot by officers was ongoing: “At the time of this video, the Fort Worth Police Department is still in the preliminary stages of this investigation and still working to collect information about the facts and circumstances surrounding this event.”

In Reality Check stories, Star-Telegram journalists dig deeper into questions over facts, consequences and accountability. Read more. Story idea? RealityCheck@star-telegram.com.

The sheriff’s office has a responsibility to the public to release the video, according to Nick Hudson, a policy and advocacy strategist with the ACLU of Texas.

“The public interest in transparency is overwhelming,” he said. “When there is a death in custody, there is no good reason to hide video of a jail death from public view. If you hide these videos away, you defeat transparency.”

In many cases, the refusal to release footage has less to do with the integrity of an investigation and more with a law enforcement agency’s image, Hudson said.

“Sometimes police agencies don’t want to disclose video because it may make them look bad, not because it would jeopardize the investigation,” he said.

Krishnaveni Gundu, an advocate with the Texas Jail Project, echoed the call for transparency as a means of fostering the public’s trust in county law enforcement.

“We believe Mr. Johnson’s family and the community should be allowed to view the video footage,” she said in an email exchange. “The jail and the Sheriff’s staff is funded by taxpayers who deserve to know what their public safety dollars are buying. Without transparency, how can the community have any faith in a system that claims to enhance public safety?”

Von Kliem, CEO of Force Science, a research, training and consulting firm that focuses on police use of force, disagreed. Releasing the footage without context, he said, could mislead the public regarding the facts of Johnson’s death.

“The idea that video speaks for itself, or that you can see with your own eyes, is simply not true,” he said. “It’s an illusion that we created from watching Hollywood films.”

🚨 More top stories from our newsroom:

→ Would releasing video of Tarrant jail death compromise investigation?

→ Fort Worth hospitals want to reduce maternal mortality

→ Family says 2 children shot in Fort Worth face long recovery

[Get our breaking news alerts.]

Withholding footage of use of force event is standard practice for law enforcement agencies around the country, Kliem said. They must strike a balance between transparency and what he called “video literacy.”

Video recording technology, whether it be police body cameras or security cameras at corrections facilities, comes with varying levels of sophistication. Videos must be “corrected” to account for factors such as varying frame rates, fish eye lenses and other technological issues that can lead to what Kliem called inaccurate representations of reality.

Still, pepper spray in and of itself is not lethal, and the Johnson family’s attorney has said that Anthony Johnson’s body showed signs of bruising. Such discrepancies between what the sheriff’s office says happened and the potential evidence of the use of force beyond pepper spray may not fall within Kliem’s video literacy margin of nuance.

“There’s some times where an excessive use of force is so obvious on video, you don’t need a video examination,” he said.

Data that could provide insight into the real world effects of releasing footage of use of force events, however, is ultimately insufficient, according to Christopher Maxwell, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University.

“Maybe the most important takeaway that you can share is the same one we too often share, namely ‘We need more research!’” he said in an email exchange.